THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF 
GlAMBATTISlA  VICO 

BENEDETTO    CROCE 


THE   UNIVERSITY 

OF   ILLINOIS 

LIBRARY 


Gift   of 

MR.    AND  MRS.    J.H.    KANIS 
Kampen,   Holland 

In  memyy  of 
HENDRICK  A.    J~AN  KANIS, 

1899-1918. 
*Class   of   1921. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ttlNWS  VMHHf 
MAY  1  6  1919 


THE   PHILOSOPHY 
OF  GIAMBATTISTA  VICO 


THE    PHILOSO?# 
OF   GIAMBATTISTA 

VICO.     BY  BENEDETTO 
CROCE 


TRANSLATED  BY  R.  G.  COLLINGWOOD 

FELLOW   AND  LECTURER   OF   PEMBROKE   COLLEGE, 
OXFORD 


NEW   YORK 
THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

1913 


TO 

WILHELM    WINDELBAND 


423407 


PREFACE 

MY  reasons  for  believing  that  a  new  exposition  of  Vico's 
philosophy  is  required  may  easily  be  inferred  from  the 
observations  on  the  effects  of  his  work  and  the  biographical 
notes  which  form  respectively  the  second  and  fourth 
appendices  to  this  volume. 

Here  I  merely  wish  to  state  that  my  exposition  is  not 
meant  for  a  summary  of  Vico's  writings  work  by  work 
and  part  by  part.  It  rather  presupposes  an  acquaintance 
with  these  writings,  and,  where  that  is  lacking,  is  intended 
to  induce  the  reader  to  procure  them  in  order  to  follow 
better  and  to  check  the  interpretation  and  estimate  of 
them  here  offered. 

On  this  supposition,  though  I  have  made  free  use  of 
my  author's  actual  words,  especially  in  the  chapters 
dealing  with  history,  I  have  not  thought  it  desirable  to 
mark  them  as  quotations  except  where  it  was  important 
to  emphasise  the  precise  phrase  of  the  original.  I  have 
in  general  combined  such  passages  from  fragments 
scattered  over  a  wide  field,  sometimes  abbreviating, 
sometimes  amplifying,  and  always  freely  adding  words 
and  phrases  of  my  own  by  way  of  commentary  :  and  the 
continual  use  of  quotation  marks  would  merely  have 
shown  up  in  a  manner  more  wearisome  than  valuable  the 
reverse  side  of  my  embroidery,  which  any  reader  who  so 
desires  can  study  by  the  help  of  the  references  given  at 
the  end  of  the  book. 

In  my  anxiety  to  show  in  every  detail  of  my  work,  so 


viii     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

far  as  I  could,  the  veneration  due  to  the  great  name  of 
Vico,  I  have  endeavoured  to  be  brief  with  the  brevity 
at  which  he  himself  aimed  as  the  hall-mark  of  sterling 
scientific  thought.  With  this  in  view  I  have  refrained 
even  from  controversy  with  his  various  interpreters,  and 
have  either  contented  myself  with  mere  remarks,  or  more 
often  left  my  details  to  be  justified  by  the  coherence  of  my 
view  as  a  whole.  Some  of  the  interpretations  supported 
by  me  I  believe  to  be  the  mature  fruit  of  the  investigations 
and  controversies  which  form  the  greater  part  of  the 
literature  on  Vico  :  all  the  rest,  for  which  I  am  personally 
responsible,  and  the  general  idea  of  my  book,  I  will  defend 
against  alternative  and  contradictory  views  when  occasion 
arises,  should  it  ever  do  so,  in  the  detailed  and  direct 
manner  which  I  have  not  thought  it  necessary  to  adopt 
in  the  course  of  my  exposition.  I  hope,  in  fact,  that 
the  present  work  will  rekindle  rather  than  quench  the 
discussion  of  Vico's  philosophy:  since  in  him  we  have, 
as  Goethe  calls  him,  the  Altvater  whom  a  nation  is  happy 
to  possess,  and  to  him  we  must  hark  back  for  a  time  in 
order  to  imbue  our  modern  philosophy  with  an  Italian 
feeling,  however  cosmopolitan  it  may  be  in  thought. 

The  dedication  of  my  book,  besides  being  a  token  of 
respect  to  one  of  the  greatest  modern  teachers  of  the 
history  of  philosophy,  is  intended  to  express  the  expecta- 
tion and  hope  that  the  gap  in  this  history  to  which  I  have 
called  attention  more  than  once,  especially  on  page  277 
of  the  present  volume,  may  soon  be  filled. 

B.C. 

RAIANO  (AQUILA), 

September  1910. 


TRANSLATOR'S   NOTE 

THIS  volume  represents  the  author's  La  Filosofia  di 
Giambattista  Vico  (Bari,  1911)  forming  vol.  ii.  of  his 
Saggi  filosofici ;  and  also  contains  a  paper  read  before 
the  Accademia  Pontaniana  in  March  1912  entitled  "  Le 
Fonti  della  gnoseologia  vichiana,"  which  figures  here 
as  Appendix  III.  The  whole  of  the  translation  has  been 

revised  by  the  Author. 

R.  G.  C. 

OXFORD,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

* 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  Vice's  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  :   FIRST  PHASE  .  i 

II.  Vico's  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE  21 

III.  INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  NEW  SCIENCE    .  36 

IV.  THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE  (POETRY 

AND  LANGUAGE)    .         .         .         .        .         .  44 

V.  THE   SEMI-IMAGINATIVE   FORM   OF    KNOWLEDGE 

(MYTH  AND  RELIGION) 62 

VI.  THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS       ....  73 

VII.  MORALITY  AND  RELIGION 85 

VIII.  MORALITY  AND  LAW  ......  95 

IX.  THE  HISTORICAL  ASPECT  OF  LAW      .         .         .103 

X.  PROVIDENCE 112 

XI.  THE  LAW  OF  REFLUX 122 

XII.  METAPHYSICS 134 

XIII.  TRANSITION  TO  HISTORY:  GENERAL  CHARACTER 

OF  Vico's  TREATMENT  OF  HISTORY      .         .  144 

XIV.  NEW  PRINCIPLES  FOR  THE  HISTORY  OF  OBSCURE 

AND  LEGENDARY  PERIODS     .        .        .        .154 

XV.  HEROIC  SOCIETY 165 

XVI.  HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY         .        .        .183 

XVII.  THE    HISTORY    OF    ROME    AND    THE    RISE    OF 

DEMOCRACY 197 


AM       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

CHAP.  PAGB 

XVIII.  THE    RETURN    OF    BARBARISM:     THE    MIDDLE 

AGES 213 

XIX.  VlCO  AND  THE  TENDENCIES  OF  CONTEMPORARY 

CULTURE 227 

XX.  CONCLUSION  :  Vico  AND  LATER  THOUGHT,  PHILO- 
SOPHICAL AND  HISTORICAL    ....       236 


APPENDICES 

I.  ON  THE  LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  G.  B.  Vico .  247 

II.  THE  LATER  HISTORY  OF  Vico's  THOUGHT         .  268 

III.  THE  SOURCES  OF  Vico's  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  279 

IV.  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 302 

NOTE. — PASSAGES  OF  Vico's  WORKS  TO  WHICH  ESPECIAL 
REFERENCE    is    MADE    IN    THE    COURSE    OF    THE 

EXPOSITION 311 

• 

INDEX  OF  NAMES 313 


CHAPTER   I 

VICO'S  THEORY  OF   KNOWLEDGE  I    FIRST   PHASE 

THE  earliest  phase  of  Vico's  theory  of  knowledge  takes 
the  form  of  a  direct  criticism  of  and  antithesis  to  the 
Cartesianism  which  had  guided  European  thought  for 
more  than  half  a  century,  and  was  to  maintain  its 
supremacy  over  mind  and  spirit  for  another  hundred 
years. 

Descartes,  as  is  well  known,  had  placed  the  ideal  of 
perfect  science  in  geometry,  and  endeavoured  to  reform 
philosophy  and  every  other  branch  of  knowledge  upon 
this  model.  Now  the  geometrical  method  proceeds 
analytically  till  it  reaches  a  self-evident  truth,  and  thence 
by  synthetic  deduction  it  advances  to  more  and  more 
complex  propositions.  Accordingly,  if  philosophy  were 
to  adopt  a  rigorous  scientific  method,  it  also  (thought 
Descartes)  must  look  for  a  solid  foundation  in  the  shape 
of  an  elementary  and  self-evident  truth  from  which  to 
deduce  all  its  subsequent  statements,  whether  theological, 
metaphysical,  physical,  or  ethical.  Thus  self-evidence — 
the  "  clear  and  distinct  perception  or  idea  " — was  the 
supreme  test :  immediate  inference — the  intuitive  con- 
nexion of  thought  with  existence,  cogito  with  sum — 
provided  the  elementary  truth  and  the  foundation  of 
knowledge.  By  means  of  the  clear  and  distinct  percep- 
tion, together  with  the  systematic  doubt  which  led  him 

I  B 


2         THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

to  the  cogito,  Descartes  persuaded  himself  that  he  had 
once  and  for  all  made  an  end  of  scepticism. 

But,  by  the  same  argument,  all  knowledge  which  had 
not  been  or  could  not  be  reduced  to  clear  and  distinct 
perception  and  geometrical  deduction  was  bound  to  lose 
in  his  eyes  all  value  and  importance.  This  included 
history,  as  founded  upon  testimony ;  observation  of 
nature,  when  not  within  the  sphere  of  mathematics  ; 
practical  wisdom  and  eloquence,  which  draw  their  validity 
from  empirical  knowledge  of  human  character ;  and 
poetry,  with  its  world  of  imaginary  presentations.  Such 
products  of  the  mind  were  for  Descartes  illusions,  chaotic 
visions,  rather  than  knowledge  :  confused  ideas,  destined 
either  to  become  clear  and  distinct  and  so  no  longer  to 
exist  in  their  original  nature,  or  else  to  drag  on  a  miser- 
able existence  unworthy  of  a  philosopher's  consideration. 
The  daylight  of  the  mathematical  method  rendered  useless 
the  lamps  which,  while  they  guide  us  in  the  darkness, 
throw  deceptive  shadows. 

Vico,  unlike  the  other  opponents  of  Descartes,  did  not 
confine  himself  to  or  waste  time  in  scandalised  outcries 
at  the  danger  to  religion  entailed  by  the  subjective 
method.  He  did  not  inquire,  like  the  schoolmen,  whether 
the  cogito  was  or  was  not  a  syllogism,  and  if  so  whether 
it  was  or  was  not  defective.  He  did  not  join  in  the 
protest  of  outraged  common-sense  against  the  Cartesian 
contempt  of  history,  rhetoric,  and  poetry.  He  went 
straight  to  the  heart  of  the  question,  to  Descartes'  criterion 
of  scientific  truth  itself,  the  principle  of  self-evidence. 
While  the  French  philosopher  believed  himself  to  have 
satisfied  all  the  demands  of  the  strictest  science,  Vico 
saw  that  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  view  of  the  need  which 
he  set  out  to  meet,  his  proposed  method  gave  little  or 
no  assistance. 

Fine  knowledge,  says  Vico,  this  of  the  clear  and  distinct 
idea !  That  I  think  what  I  think  is  certainly  an  in- 


VIC&S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  3 

dubitable  fact ;  but  it  has  by  no  means  the  appearance 
I  a  scientific  statement.     Any  idea,  however  false,  may 
seem  self-evident :  that  I  think  it  so  does  not  give  it  the 
force  of  knowledge.     That  "  he  who  thinks,  exists  "  was 
a  fact  well  known  to  Plautus's  Sosia,  who  expressed  this 
conviction  in  almost  the  identical  words  of  the  Cartesian 
philosophy  :    «'  but  when  I  think,  I  certainly  exist  -  (sed 
quom  cogito,  equidem  certo  sum).     But  the  sceptic  will 
always  reply  to  a  Sosia  or  a  Descartes  that  he  has  no 
doubt  as  to  thought;    he  will  even  strongly  maintain 
that  whatever  seems  to  him  cogent  is  certain,  and  will 
uphold  it  against  all  objections ;    and  that  he  has  no 
loubt  as  to  existence  :  in  fact,  he  is  seeking  after  it  in  the 
right  way  by  suspending  judgment  and  not  adding  to 
the   obscurity   of   facts   other   obscurities   arising   from 
opinions.     But  while  asserting  all  this  he  will  still  main- 
tain that  the  certitude  of  his  thought  and  of  his  existence 
is  the  certitude  not  of  science  but  of  consciousness,  and 
1  common  consciousness  at  that.     Clear  and  distinct 
perception  is  so  far  from  being  science  that  since,  owing 
to  Cartesianism,  the  principle  has  been  applied  to  physics 
our  knowledge  of  nature  has  become  no  more  certain' 
Descartes  tried  to  leap  from  the  plane  of  common  con- 
sciousness to  that  of  science  :  he  fell  back  into  common 
consciousness  again  without  having  touched  his  scientific 
ideal. 

But  in  what  does  scientific  truth  consist,  if  not  in 

immediate  consciousness  ?     How  does  science  differ  from 

simple    consciousness?     What    is    the    criterion,   or    in 

•ther  words,  what  is  the  condition  which  makes  science 

possible  ?     Clearness  and  distinctness  do  not  take  us  a 

step  forward.     The  formulation  of  an  elementary  truth 

does   not    solve   the    problem.     The    question    concerns 

t  a  primary  truth,  but  the  form  which  truth  must 

have  to  enable  us  to  recognise  it  for  scientific  or  real 
truth 


4         THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

In  meeting  this  question,  Vico  justified  his  criticism 
of  the  inadequacy  of  the  Cartesian  criterion  by  appealing 
to  a  principle  which  at  first  sight  may  seem  trite  and 
obvious.  It  is  trite  not  because  of  the  historic  theory 
with  which  Vico  associated  it,  a  theory  later  refuted  by 
himself :  not,  that  is,  because  it  belongs  to  one  of  the 
earliest  strata  of  Italian  philosophy ;  but  in  the  sense 
that  it  was  common  to  and  practically  inseparable  from 
Christian  thought.  To  a  Christian  who  declares  every 
day  his  belief  in  a  God  Almighty,  Omniscient,  Maker  of 
heaven  and  earth,  nothing  is  more  familiar  than  the 
assertion  that  God  alone  can  fully  know  all  things,  because 
he  alone  is  their  creator.  The  primal  truth,  Vico  repeats, 
is  in  God,  because  God  is  the  primal  creator.  It  is  an 
infinite  truth  because  he  is  the  maker  of  all  things,  and 
absolute  because  it  displays  to  him  the  internal  and 
external  qualities  of  things,  all  of  which  he  contains  in 
himself. 

This  same  principle  of  religion  and  theology  had  been 
already  invoked  in  a  philosophical  context  by  certain 
sceptics,  as  a  weapon  against  the  presumptuous  claims 
of  human  knowledge.  Francisco  Sanchez,  for  example, 
in  his  Quod,  nihil  scitur  (1581),  in  discussing  the  difficulty 
of  knowing  the  nature  and  powers  of  the  soul,  had  observed 
that  if  man  could  have  this  knowledge  in  a  perfect  degree 
he  would  be  like  God,  or  rather  he  would  be  God  himself  : 
since  it  is  impossible  "  that  one  should  know  perfectly 
things  which  he  has  not  created,  nor  could  God  have 
created  things  of  which  he  had  not  perfect  foreknowledge, 
nor  ruled  them  when  created  :  he  himself  therefore, 
being  alone  the  perfect  wisdom,  knowledge,  and  intellect, 
penetrates  all  things,  is  wise  concerning  all  things,  knows 
all  things,  and  understands  all  things,  because  he  is  all 
things  and  in  all  things,  and  all  things  are  he  and  in  him  " 
(perfecte  cognoscere  quis  quae  non  creavit,  nee  Deus  creare 
potuisset  nee  creata  regere  quae  non  perfecte  praecognovisset : 


VICO'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  5 

ipse  ergo  solus  sapientia  cognitio  intellectus  perfectus 
omnia  penetrat  omnia  sapit  omnia  cognoscit  omnia  in- 
telligit,  quia  ipse  omnia  est  et  in  omnibus,  omniaque  ipse 
sunt  et  in  ipso).1  But  Sanchez  appeals  to  this  thought 
only  in  passing,  and  without  grasping  its  philosophical 
import  or  realising  that  his  hand  was  resting  upon  a 
treasure  ;  while  Vico  for  the  first  time  drew  from  the 
praise  of  the  infinite  power  and  wisdom  of  God,  and  from 
their  contrast  with  the  limited  faculties  of  man,  the  , 
universal  principle  of  his  theory  of  knowledge,  that  the 
condition  under  which  a  thing  can  be  known  is  that  the 
knower  should  have  made  it,  that  the  true  is  identical 
with  the  created  :  verum  ipsum  factum. 

This,  he  explained,  is  precisely  what  is  meant  by 
saying  that  science  is  to  know  by  causes,  per  causas 
scire.  Since  a  cause  is  that  which  has  no  need  of  anything 
external  in  order  to  produce  its  effect,  it  is  the  genus  or 
mode  of  a  thing  :  to  know  the  cause  is  to  be  able  to  realise 
the  thing,  to  deduce  it  from  its  cause  and  create  it.  In 
other  words,  it  is  an  ideal  repetition  of  a  process  which 
has  been  or  is  being  practically  performed.  Cognition 
and  action  must  be  convertible  and  identical,  just  as 
with  God  intellect  and  will  are  convertible  and  form  one 
single  unity. 

Now  once  this  connexion  of  the  true  with  the  created 
is  recognised  as  the  ideal,  and  indeed,  since  the  ideal  is 
the  truly  real,  as  the  true  nature  of  science,  the  first 
consequence  of  such  a  recognition  must  be  that  science 
is  unattainable  to  man.  If  God  created  the  world, 
he  alone  knows  it  per  causas,  he  alone  knows  its  genera 
or  modes,  he  alone  possesses  scientific  knowledge  of  it. 
Did  man  make  the  world  ?  Did  he  make  his  own 
soul  ? 

To  man  is  vouchsafed,  not  science,  but  only  conscious- 

1  In  the  appendix  to  his  Opera  Medico,  (Tolosae  Tectosagum,  1636, 
p.  no).  Windelband  draws  attention  to  this  thought,  Gesch.  der 
neueren  Philosophic,  3rd  ed.  i.  p.  23. 


6         THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

ness,  which  merely  traverses  objects  without  being  able 
to  show  the  genus  or  form  whence  they  proceed.  The 
truth  of  consciousness  is  the  human  side  of  divine  wisdom, 
related  to  it  as  the  surface  to  the  solid  :  rather  than 
truth,  we  ought  to  call  it  certitude.  For  God,  intellegere, 
understanding ;  for  man  only  cogitare,  thought,  the 
faculty  that  gleans  elements  of  reality,  but  can  never 
gather  them  all.  For  God,  true  demonstration ;  for 
man,  observations  undemonstrated  and  unscientific,  but 
either  certain  through  indubitable  evidence,  probable 
through  sound  reasoning,  or  convincing  because  of  a 
plausible  guess. 

Certitude,  the  truth  of  consciousness,  is  not  science ; 
but  it  is  not  on  that  account  false.  Vico  was  careful 
not  to  call  the  theories  of  Descartes  false  :  his  intention 
was  only  to  lower  them  from  complete  truth  to  fragmentary 
truth,  from  science  to  consciousness.  Cogito  ergo  sum  is 
very  far  from  false.  That  we  find  it  expressed  by  Plautus's 
Sosia  is  an  argument  not  for  rejecting  it,  but  for  accepting 
it ;  only,  as  a  truth  of  simple  consciousness.  Thought 
is  not  the  cause  of  my  existence,  and  as  such  is  not  the 
ground  of  scientific  knowledge  of  that  existence.  If  it 
were,  since  man,  as  the  Cartesians  admitted,  consists  of 
body  and  mind,  thought  would  be  the  cause  of  the  body  : 
a  doctrine  which  would  plunge  us  into  all  the  mazes  of 
the  controversy  on  the  mutual  effects  of  mind  and  matter. 
The  cogito,  then,  is  a  mere  sign  or  indication  of  my  existence, 
and  nothing  more.  The  clear  and  distinct  idea  cannot 
serve  as  a  criterion  even  of  the  mind  itself,  to  say  nothing 
of  other  things  ;  since  the  mind,  though  it  knows  itself, 
does  not  create  itself,  and  accordingly  is  ignorant  of 
the  genus  or  mode  by  which  it  has  this  knowledge.  But 
the  clear  and  distinct  idea  is  all  that  is  granted  to  human 
thought,  and,  as  the  only  wealth  it  possesses,  is  beyond 
price.  For  Vico,  too,  metaphysic  holds  the  highest  place 
among  the  human  sciences,  and  all  others  depend  upon 


VICOS  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  7 

it ;  but  while  for  Descartes  it  can  proceed  by  a  method 
of  absolute  demonstration  parallel  to  that  of  geometry, 
for  Vico  it  must  be  satisfied  with  probabilities.  It  is  a 
science  not  by  causes,  but  of  causes.  And  with  prob- 
abilities it  has  been  content  in  its  greatest  periods,  in 
ancient  Greece  and  in  Italy  at  the  Renaissance.  When- 
ever, intoxicated  by  the  arrogance  that  declares  that 
"  a  wise  man  has  no  opinions  "  (sapientem  nihil  opinari), 
it  has  sought  to  abandon  the  probable,  it  has  set  its  feet 
upon  the  path  of  confusion  and  decadence.  The  existence 
of  God  is  certain,  but  not  scientifically  demonstrable  ; 
and  any  attempt  at  such  a  demonstration  must  be  con- 
sidered a  proof  not  so  much  of  piety  as  of  impiety,  since 
to  demonstrate  God  we  must  create  him  :  man  must 
become  the  creator  of  God.  Similarly  we  must  accept 
as  true  all  that  God  has  revealed ;  but  we  must  not  ask 
how  it  comes  to  be  true.  That  we  can  never  understand. 
Human  science  bases  itself  upon  revealed  truth  and  the 
consciousness  of  God,  and  finds  there  its  test  of  truth  ; 
but  the  foundation  itself  is  not  science,  but  consciousness. 
Just  as  Vico  depreciated  metaphysics,  theology,  and 
physics,  the  sciences  upon  which  Descartes  had  bestowed 
honour  and  attention,  so  he  reinstated  those  branches  of 
knowledge  which  Descartes  had  in  turn  despised  ;  namely, 
history,  observation  of  nature,  empirical  knowledge  of 
man  and  society,  eloquence  and  poetry.  Or  rather,  he 
could  vindicate  them  without  reinstating  them.  Once 
he  had  shown  that  the  lofty  truths  of  a  geometrically 
deduced  philosophy  were  themselves  brought  down  to 
mere  probability,  to  statements  having  the  validity  of 
simple  consciousness,  the  other  forms  of  knowledge  were 
ipso  facto  conclusively  vindicated.  All  now  found  them- 
selves upon  an  equality  in  the  position,  whether  high  or 
low,  which  we  have  described.  The  idea  of  a  perfect 
human  science,  holding  itself  aloof  from  another  science 
unworthy  of  the  title,  as  founded  not  on  reason  but  on 


8         THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

authority,  was  shown  to  be  illusory.  The  authority  of 
observations  and  beliefs,  whether  one's  own  or  others', 
public  opinion,  tradition,  the  consciousness  of  mankind, 
were  restored  to  the  position  which  they  had  always  held  : 
a  position  which  they  held  even  for  Descartes  himself, 
who,  as  often  happens,  despised  the  resources  in  which 
he  was  richest  and  of  which  he  made  the  greatest  use. 
A  conspicuously  learned  man,  he  depreciated  learning 
and  scholarship,  as  one  who  has  received  nourishment 
from  it  might  give  himself  the  luxury  of  speaking  with 
contempt  of  the  common  food  which  by  now  forms  the 
very  blood  in  his  veins. 

The  Cartesian  polemic  against  authority  had  proved 
in  some  respects  beneficial.  It  put  an  end  to  the  servile 
attitude,  all  too  common,  of  continual  appeals  to  authority. 
But  this  error  was  not  more  prevalent  than  that  of  private 
judgment,  which  presumed  to  reorganise  knowledge  from 
top  to  bottom  on  the  strength  of  the  individual  conscious- 
ness :  a  tendency  which  ultimately,  as  in  the  case  of 
Malebranche,  leads  to  prophesying  the  immolation  of  all 
the  ancient  philosophers  and  poets,  and  a  return  to  the 
nakedness  of  Adam.  It  is  a  fallacy,  or  at  least  an  excess, 
which  should  be  avoided  by  adopting  a  sound  middle 
course.  This  course  consists  in  following  private  judg- 
ment with  due  regard  to  authority ;  in  a  true  catholic 
union  of  faith  with  a  criticism  limited  by  and  helpful  to 
faith  ;  bearing  in  mind  the  necessary  character  of  mere 
probability  which  is  proper  to  human  knowledge  or 
science,  and  avoiding  the  tendency  of  the  Reformation 
which  elevates  each  man's  inner  consciousness  into  a 
divine  guide  in  matters  of  belief. 

To  another  group  of  the  Cartesian  sciences,  however, 
Vico  seems  to  grant  a  privileged  position,  one,  that  is, 
not  of  consciousness  but  of  science  strictly  so  called,  in 
the  sphere  not  of  certitude  but  of  truth ;  namely,  the 
mathematical  sciences.  These,  according  to  him,  form 


VICWS  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  g 

the  only  region  in  which  man's  knowledge  is  identical  in 
character  with  God's,  perfect  and  demonstrative.  This 
is  not  due,  as  Descartes  supposed,  to  their  self-evident 
character.  Self -evidence,  when  employed  in  physical 
science  and  in  matters  of  action,  does  not  yield  truth  of 
the  same  conclusiveness  as  in  mathematics.  Nor  is 
mathematics  in  itself  self-evident.  What  clear  and 
distinct  idea  can  lead,  for  instance,  to  the  conception  of  a 
line  as  composed  of  points  having  no  parts  ?  But  the 
indivisible  point  which  cannot  be  conceived  in  the  world 
of  reality,  can  be  nevertheless  denned.  By  defining 
certain  names,  man  creates  the  elements  of  mathematics  ; 
by  the  postulates,  he  carries  them  on  to  infinity  ;  by  the 
axioms,  he  establishes  certain  eternal  truths ;  and, 
disposing  these  elements  with  the  help  of  these  infinities 
and  this  eternity,  he  creates  the  truth  which  he  teaches. 
The  validity  of  mathematics  then  arises  not  from  the 
Cartesian  principle,  but  precisely  from  Vico's  other  pro- 
position, the  conversion  of  knowledge  with  creation. 
'  We  demonstrate  mathematics,  because  we  create  their 
truth  "  (mathematica  demonstramus,  quid  verum  facimus). 
Man  assumes  unity  and  multiplicity,  points  and  figures, 
and  creates  numbers  and  quantities  which  he  knows 
perfectly  because  they  are  his  own  work.  Mathematics 
is  a  constructive  science  ;  not  only  in  its  problems,  but 
even  in  its  theorems,  which  are  commonly  supposed  to 
be  mere  objects  of  contemplation.  For  this  reason  it 
is  a  science  which  demonstrates  per  causas,  in  opposition 
to  that  other  common  view  which  excludes  from  mathe- 
matics the  concept  of  causation.  It  is  in  fact  the  only 
one  among  all  the  human  sciences  which  truly  demon- 
strates by  causes.  Hence  its  extraordinary  accuracy. 
The  whole  secret  of  the  geometrical  method  lies  first  in 
defining  the  terms,  that  is,  creating  the  concepts  which 
are  to  be  the  subject  matter  of  our  reasoning  ;  secondly, 
in  establishing  certain  common  principles  by  mutual 


io       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

consent  of  the  disputants;  and  lastly,  if  required,  in 
making  certain  postulates  of  such  a  nature  that  they  can 
be  granted,  to  enable  us  to  proceed  with  our  deductions, 
which  without  such  an  agreement  could  make  no  progress  ; 
then,  upon  these  principles,  to  advance  by  degrees  from 
the  demonstration  of  the  simplest  truths  to  the  most 
complex,  and  not  to  affirm  the  complex  propositions 
before  examining  singly  their  component  parts. 

It  might  be  said  that,  as  to  the  validity  of  mathe- 
matics, Vico  is  in  agreement  with  Descartes  ;  he  differs 
from  him  only  in  his  reason  for  this  validity.  And, 
admitting  that  Vico's  reason  must  be  thought  the  more 
profound,  this  would  only  enhance  and  strengthen  the 
mathematical  ideal  which  Descartes  had  set  before  science. 
If  mathematics  is  the  one  perfect  form  of  knowledge 
attained  by  the  human  mind,  obviously  we  must  found 
the  others  upon  it,  and  either  remodel  or  condemn  them 
according  to  its  pattern.  Vico,  in  short,  was  hasty  in 
declaring  Descartes  wrong :  he  had  found  a  better 
argument  whose  existence  the  latter  had  not  suspected. 
But,  however  strongly  this  may  appear  at  first  sight 
(and  so  it  has  appeared  to  some  commentators),  on  a 
closer  examination  it  is  seen  that  the  high  perfection 
attributed  by  Vico  to  mathematics  is  more  apparent 
than  real ;  that  the  vaunted  conclusiveness  of  its  method 
is  by  his  own  confession  gained  at  the  expense  of  truth  : 
in  a  word,  that  the  stress  of  his  theory  falls  less  on  the 
truth  of  mathematics  than  on  its  arbitrary  nature. 

The  fact  is,  that  man,  while  occupying  himself  with 
the  investigation  of  the  nature  of  things,  and  ultimately 
realising  his  total  inability  to  attain  it,  not  having  in 
himself  the  elements  of  which  they  are  composed,  which 
are  indeed  all  external  to  his  nature,  is  led  by  degrees  to 
the  intention  of  profiting  by  this  very  fault  of  his  mind. 
By  means  of  abstraction — not,  be  it  remembered,  abstrac- 
tion from  material  things,  for  Vico  is  opposed  to  the 


THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  n 

empirical  origin  of  mathematics,  but  abstraction  brought 
to  bear  on  metaphysical  entities — he  creates  two  fictions, 
duo  sibi  confingit :  the  point  in  geometrical  figures,  and 
unity  in  multiplication.  Each  is  a  fiction,  utrumque 
fictum,  because  the  point  when  drawn  is  no  longer  a 
point,  and  the  unit  when  multiplied  is  no  longer  one. 
Then,  from  these  fictions,  by  his  own  arbitrary  fiat, 
proprio  iure,  he  assumes  an  infinite  process,  so  that 
lines  may  be  produced  or  the  unit  multiplied  ad  infinitum. 
Thus  he  constructs  for  his  own  purposes  a  world  of  forms 
and  numbers,  all  of  which  he  embraces  within  himself ; 
and  by  lengthening,  shortening,  and  combining  the  lines 
and  adding  and  subtracting  the  numbers,  he  performs 
infinite  operations  and  learns  infinite  truths.  Since  he 
cannot  define  things,  he  defines  names ;  since  he  cannot 
reach  the  elements  of  reality  he  satisfies  himself  with 
imaginary  elements,  the  ideas  arising  from  which  admit 
of  no  dispute.  Like  God,  ad  Dei  instar,  from  no  material 
substrate  and,  as  it  were,  out  of  nothing  he  creates  the 
point,  the  line,  and  the  surface  ;  the  point,  assumed  as 
that  which  has  no  parts  ;  the  line,  as  the  locus  of  a  point, 
or  as  length  without  breadth  or  depth  ;  and  the  surface, 
as  the  meeting  of  two  different  lines  in  one  point,  that  is, 
length  and  breadth  without  depth.  Thus  mathematics 
overcomes  the  failing  of  human  knowledge,  that  its 
objects  are  always  external  to  itself,  and  that  the  mind 
which  endeavours  to  know  them  has  not  created  them. 
Mathematics  creates  what  it  knows  ;  it  contains  in  itself 
its  own  elements,  and  thus  forms  a  perfect  copy  of  the 
divine  knowledge  (scientiae  divinae  similes  evadunt}. 

The  reader  of  these  and  other  similar  descriptions 
and  praises  by  Vico  of  the  processes  of  mathematics 
seems  to  observe  in  them  something  like  a  tinge  of  irony  ; 
which,  if  not  actually  intentional,  certainly  results  from 
the  facts  of  the  case.  The  brilliant  truth  of  mathematics 
arises,  it  appears,  from  despair  of  attaining  truth ;  its 


tremendous  power  from  the  knowledge  of  impotence. 
The  similarity  of  the  mathematician  to  God  is  not 
altogether  unlike  that  x>f  the  imitator  of  an  object  to  its 
creator.  What  God  is  in  the  universe  of  reality,  man 
is  in  the  universe  of  quantity  and  number, — a  universe 
indeed,  but  one  peopled  by  abstractions  and  fictions. 
The  divinity  which  has  been  conferred  upon  man  is  only, 
so  to  speak,  a  Twelfth-night  Godhead. 

The  different  origin  assigned  by  Vico  to  mathematics 
results  in  a  correspondingly  profound  change  in  the 
validity  of  its  truth.  Mathematics  no  Monger,  as  with 
Descartes,  stands  at  the  summit  of  human  knowledge, 
an  aristocratic  science,  destined  to  reclaim  and  to  rule 
over  the  inferior  sciences.  It  occupies  a  field  as  strictly 
limited  as  it  is  unique,  beyond  which  if  it  ever  attempts 
to  pass  it  loses  in  a  moment  its  magical  virtue. 

The  power  of  mathematics  is  met  by  obstacles  both 
a  parte  ante  and  a  parte  post,  in  its  foundations  and  in 
the  superstructure  which  in  its  turn  it  is  to  support. 
In  its  foundations,  because  if  it  creates  its  own  elements, 
that  is  to  say,  the  initial  fictions,  it  does  not  create  the 
matter  of  which  they  are  formed,  which  is  given  to  it 
no  less  than  to  the  other  human  sciences  by  metaphysics, 
which  while  it  cannot  supply  it  with  its  true  subject 
matter,  supplies  it  with  definite  images  of  it.  From 
metaphysics,  geometry  takes  the  point  by  drawing  it, 
that  is  by  annihilating  it  as  a  point,  and  arithmetic  the 
unit  by  multiplying  it,  that  is  by  destroying  it  qua  unit. 
But  since  metaphysical  truth,  however  certain  it  may 
seem  to  consciousness,  is  indemonstrable,  mathematics 
itself  rests  in  the  last  resort  upon  authority  and  prob- 
ability. This  is  enough  to  expose  the  fallaciousness  of 
any  mathematical  treatise  which  makes  use  of  meta- 
physics. '  Vico  seems  to  be  involved  in  a  kind  of  circle 
between  geometry  and  metaphysics,  of  which  the  former, 
according  to  him,  owes  its  truth  to  the  latter,  and  after 


VICO'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  13 

receiving  it  gives  it  back  again  to  metaphysics,  thus  in 
turn  supporting  the  human  science  by  the  divine.  But 
this  conceptipn,  the  truth  of  which  is  more  than  doubtful, 
indeed  we  may  frankly  call  it  inconsistent  and  contra- 
dictory, recalls,  whatever  its  value,  the  metaphysical  or 
rather  poetical  or  symbolic  use  made  of  mathematics  by 
Pythagoras  and  other  philosophers  of  antiquity  and  the 
Renaissance,  and  has  no  resemblance  to  a  mathematically- 
treated  philosophy  like  the  Cartesian.  Geometry  in 
Vico's  opinion  is  the  one  hypothesis  by  which  meta- 
physics passes  over  into  physical  science.  But  while 
making  this  advance  it  remains  a  hypothesis,  a  prob- 
ability, something  intermediate  between  faith  and  criti- 
cism, imagination  and  reason ;  which  indeed  is  the 
eternal  character  of  metaphysics  and  human  science  in 
general  according  to  Vico's  point  of  view  in  this  first  phase 
of  his  theory  of  knowledge. 

Just  as  mathematics  cannot  be  the  basis  of  meta- 
physics, the  science  from  which  it  is  itself  derived,  so  it 
cannot  provide  a  foundation  for  the  other  sciences,  although 
they  follow  it  in  order  of  derivation.  All  objects  other 
than  number  and  size  are  beyond  the  reach  of  the  geo- 
metrical method.  Physical  science  is  indemonstrable  : 
if  we  could  demonstrate  the  physical  world,  we  should 
be  creating  it  (si  physica  demonstrare  possemus,  faceremus)  : 
but  we  do  not  create  it,  and  are  accordingly  unable  to 
demonstrate  it.  The  introduction  of  the  mathematical 
method  into  natural  science  has  not  helped  it.  Without 
the  mathematical  method,  science  makes  great  dis- 
coveries ;  by  its  means  it  has  made  none,  whether  great 
or  small.  The  physical  science  of  to-day  is  in  fact  like 
a  house,  sumptuously  furnished  by  former  owners,  to 
which  their  heirs  have  added  nothing,  but  have  occupied 
themselves  merely  in  moving  and  rearranging  the  furniture. 
Accordingly,  we  must  reintroduce  and  maintain  the 
experimental  method  in  physical  science,  as  opposed  to 


14       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

this  mathematical  method ;  the  English  tendency  as 
opposed  to  the  French ;  the  cautious  use  made  of 
mathematics  by  Galileo  and  his  school,  as  against  the 
Cartesians'  reckless  and  presumptuous  employment  of 
it.  The  English  are  right  in  not  allowing  physical  science 
to  be  taught  in  the  mathematical  style.  Such  a  style 
admits  of  progress  only  when  the  terms  are  denned,  the 
axioms  established,  and  the  postulates  granted.  In 
physical  science  we  have  to  define  not  terms  but  things  : 
we  can  make  no  unchallenged  statements  ;  and  the  com- 
plexity of  nature  forbids  our  forming  any  postulates. 
Thus  in  the  more  favourable  instances  this  method 
results  in  a  mere  harmless  verbalism.  Observations  of 
nature  are  expounded  with  the  phrases  :  "  By  definition 
IV.,"  "  By  postulate  II.,"  "  By  axiom  III.,"  and  con- 
cluded with  the  pompous  abbreviation  "  Q.E.D. " 
But  all  this  carries  no  demonstrative  conviction.  The 
mind  retains  as  much  freedom  of  opinion  as  it  had  before 
listening  to  such  noisy  methods.  In  these  circumstances 
Vico  could  not  refrain  from  satirical  comparisons.  The 
geometrical  method,  he  says,  in  its  proper  sphere  works 
unnoticed  ;  when  it  makes  a  noise,  it  shows  that  it  is 
doing  no  work ;  just  as  a  coward's  attack  consists  of 
much  shouting  and  no  blows,  while  a  brave  man  holds  his 
tongue  and  strikes  home.  Again,  the  man  who  upholds 
the  geometrical  method  in  subjects  where  it  fails  to 
carry  conviction,  when  he  pronounces  this  to  be  an 
axiom,  or  that  to  be  a  demonstrated  truth,  is  like  a  man 
who  draws  amorphous  pictures,  quite  unrecognisable 
without  assistance,  and  then  writes  underneath  "  This 
is  a  man,"  or  "  This  is  a  satyr,"  or  "  This  is  a  lion,"  or  the 
like.  Hence  it  happens  that  the  very  same  geometrical 
method  served  Proclus  to  demonstrate  the  principles  of 
Aristotelian  science,  and  Descartes  to  demonstrate  his 
own,  though  totally  distinct  from,  if  not  diametrically 
opposed  to  them.  Yet  each  was  a  great  geometrician, 


VICO'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  15 

whom  no  one  could  accuse  of  inability  to  use  the  method. 
What  ought  to  be  introduced  into  natural  science  is  not 
the  method  of  geometry,  but  its  conclusiveness  ;  which 
is  precisely  what  can  never  be  done.  Still  less  is  it  possible 
in  other  sciences,  in  proportion  as  they  are  more  material 
and  concrete  ;  least  of  all  in  ethical  science.  For  this 
reason,  where  the  reality  cannot  be  used,  the  name  is 
misused  instead  ;  till,  just  as  the  title  "  Master,"  which 
Tiberius  once  refused  as  too  haughty,  is  given  to-day 
to  the  humblest  man,  so  the  name  "  demonstration," 
applied  as  it  is  to  arguments  at  best  probable,  sometimes 
patently  fallacious,  has  impaired  the  respect  due  to 
truth. 

Even  for  mathematics  itself  Vico  apprehends  danger 
from  the  substitution  of  analytic  for  geometrical  or  syn- 
thetic methods.  He  doubts  whether  modern  mechanics 
is  really  a  product  of  analysis ;  for  analysis  blunts  the 
inventive  faculty  or  talent,  and  though  infallible  in 
its  results  (opere)  is  confused  in  its  processes  (opera)  ; 
while  the  synthetic  method  is  turn  opere  cum  opera  in- 
fallible. Analysis  presents  its  grounds  by  inquiring 
whether  the  equations  of  which  it  is  in  search  happen  to 
be  present ;  it  appears  to  be  an  art  of  guessing,  a  kind 
of  mechanism  rather  than  thought.  For  similar  reasons 
Vico  attached  no  value  to  the  more  or  less  mechanical 
topics  and  arts  of  discovery  and  memory  invented  by 
Lulle  and  Kircher. 

The  sympathy  with  experimental  methods  which  as 
we  have  seen  estranged  Vico  from  the  French  tendency 
of  thought,  that  is  from  Cartesianism,  and  directed  him 
towards  the  Italian  and  English  schools  of  Galileo  and 
Bacon,  led  him  on  the  other  hand  to  a  hostile  attitude 
towards  Aristotelianism  and  scholasticism.  Inculcating 
as  he  did  the  pursuit  of  the  particular  and  the  use  of 
inductive  methods,  asserting  that  man  possessed  an  in- 
exhaustible wealth  of  physical  knowledge  which,  thanks 


1 6       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

to  fire,  machinery,  and  tools,  was  able  to  issue  in  the 
creation  of  objects  resembling  the  special  products  of 
nature,  and  praising  his  own  metaphysic  as  one  sub- 
servient to  (ancillantem]  the  ends  of  experimental  science, 
he  was  bound  to  realise  how  well  deserved  was  the  too 
universal  discredit,  as  he  calls  it,  into  which  Aristotelian 
science  had  fallen.  If  he  disapproved  of  the  introduction 
by  Descartes  of  physical  forms  into  metaphysics,  and  of 
his  resulting  materialistic  tendencies,  he  accused  Aristotle 
and  the  schoolmen  of  the  opposite  error  of  introducing 
metaphysical  forms  into  natural  science.  Like  Bacon 
he  held  that  the  syllogism  and  sorites  produce  nothing 
new,  and  only  repeat  what  was  already  contained  in  their 
premisses.  He  emphasised  the  many  ill  effects  of  the 
Aristotelian  universal  in  every  department  of  knowledge  ; 
in  jurisprudence,  where  empty  generalities  crush  legisla- 
tive wisdom  ;  in  medicine,  which  aims  rather  at  propping 
up  systems  than  at  healing  the  sick ;  and  in  practical 
life,  in  which  he  describes  the  abusers  of  universals  by 
the  mocking  title  of  "  Thematists."  The  use  of  universals 
results  in  homonymies  or  equivocations  which  cause  all 
kinds  of  errors.  As  against  this  distrust  of  universals 
in  the  sense  of  general  or  abstract  conceptions,  Vico 
showed  a  corresponding  reverence  for  the  Platonic  ideas, 
the  metaphysical  forms,  or  as  he  also  called  them,  kinds  ; 
the  eternal  and  infinitely  perfect  patterns  of  things.  A 
nominalist  in  mathematics,  Vico  was  suspicious  of  nomin- 
alism in  all  other  fields  of  knowledge.  He  asserts  the 
reality  of  the  forms  or  ideas,  and  tells  how  from  his  youth 
up  he  was  attracted  by  this  doctrine,  which  he  learnt 
from  a  teacher  of  his,  who  as  a  Scotist  was  a  follower  of 
the  scholastic  system  most  akin  to  Plato's. 

Taken  as  a  whole  Vico's  first  theory  of  knowledge  is 
neither  intellectualistic,  sensationalistic,  nor  truly  specu- 
lative. It  contains  all  these  three  elements,  harmonised 
to  a  certain  extent,  not  by  a  hierarchical  subordination 


VlCCfS  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  17 

of  any  two  to  the  third,  but  by  the  subjection  of  all  three 
to  a  recognition  of  the  inadequacy  of  human  knowledge. 
Its  intention  may  have  been  to  meet  by  a  tactical 
manoeuvre  dogmatics  and  sceptics  at  once,  the  former 
by  denying  that  we  can  know  everything,  the  latter  by 
denying  that  we  can  know  nothing  at  all.  But  its 
actual  outcome  is  an  assertion  of  scepticism  or  agnosti- 
cism, tinged,  however,  with  a  trace  of  mysticism.  God's 
knowledge  is  the  complete  sphere  of  knowledge,  the 
unity  of  which  man's  is  but  a  series  of  fragments.  God 
knows  all  things  because  he  contains  in  himself  all  the 
elements  of  which  he  makes  them  :  man  tries  to  under- 
stand them  by  taking  them  to  pieces.  Human  science 
is  a  sort  of  anatomy  of  the  world  of  nature ;  it  divides 
man  into  body  and  soul,  and  soul  into  intellect  and  will : 
from  body  it  abstracts  figure  and  motion,  and  from  these 
existence  and  unity.  Of  these  metaphysics  studies 
existence,  arithmetic  unity  and  multiplication,  geometry 
figure  and  its  measurements,  mechanics  the  motion  of 
the  circumference,  physical  science  the  motion  of  the 
centre,  medicine  the  body,  logic  the  reason,  and  ethics 
the  will.  But  this  anatomy  meets  with  the  same  fate 
as  that  of  the  human  body.  In  the  latter  case,  the 
greatest  physiologists  doubt  whether,  owing  to  the 
effects  of  death  and  of  dissection  itself,  it  is  possible  at 
all  to  discover  the  true  position,  structure,  and  function 
of  the  organs.  Existence,  unity,  figure,  motion,  body, 
intellect,  and  will  are  one  thing  for  God,  for  whom  they 
coalesce  into  one,  and  another  for  man,  to  whom  they 
remain  distinct.  For  God  they  live,  for  man  they  are 
dead.  The  clear  and  distinct  perception  is  a  proof  not 
of  the  strength  but  of  the  weakness  of  the  human  under- 
standing. Physical  laws  appear  self-evident  just  until 
they  are  subjected  to  comparison  with  metaphysical. 
The  Cogito  ergo  sum  is  absolutely  conclusive  when  man 
considers  himself  as  a  finite  being  ;  but  when  he  includes 

c 


i8      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    V1CO 

himself  in  God,  the  one  true  being,  he  realises  that  in 
truth  he  does  not  exist  at  all.  By  means  of  extension 
and  its  three  dimensions  we  believe  ourselves  to  establish 
eternal  truths  ;  but  in  fact  coelum  ipsum  petimus  stultitia, 
since  the  eternal  truths  exist  in  God  alone.  The  axiom 
that  the  whole  is  greater  than  the  part  may  seem  eternal, 
but  if  we  go  back  to  the  beginning,  we  find  that  it  is 
false  :  we  see  that  the  centre  of  the  circle  contains  in 
itself  as  much  capacity  for  extension  as  the  whole  circum- 
ference. Wherefore,  Vico  concludes,  "  he  has  advanced 
in  metaphysics  who  in  the  study  of  this  science  has 
lost  himself." 

To  hold,  as  some  have  done,  that  these  words  show 
Vico  a  simple  Platonist  or  a  follower  of  the  traditional 
Christian  philosophy,  would  entail  denying  any  import- 
ance whatever  to  his  first  theory  of  knowledge.  It  would 
be  a  confession  of  adherence  to  the  fallacious  method  of 
philosophical  criticism  and  history  which  looks  only  at 
the  general  conclusions  of  a  system  and  ignores  the 
particular  content  which  alone  gives  it  its  true  individu- 
ality. No  doubt,  any  philosophy  must  always  in  its 
ultimate  conclusions  be  either  agnostic,  mystical,  material- 
istic, spiritualistic,  or  the  like  :  in  other  words,  it  must 
have  its  place  in  one  or  other  of  the  eternal  categories  in 
which  thought  and  philosophical  inquiry  move.  But 
to  expound  philosophers  in  this  one-sided  manner  can 
only  serve  to  perpetuate  the  mistakes  repeated  over  and 
over  again  in  the  history  of  thought,  when  it  passes  fruit- 
lessly from  one  error  to  another,  leaving  the  old  only  to 
adopt  the  new,  itself  perhaps  an  old  one  born  again 
or  painted  with  the  colours  of  youth.  The  Platonism, 
agnosticism,  or  mysticism  of  Vico  is  in  the  fullest  sense 
of  the  word  original,  because  it  forms  the  accompani- 
ment of  doctrines  not  only  not  inferior  to  the 
average  of  contemporary  thought,  but  greatly  in  advance 
of  it. 


THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:   FIRST  PHASE  19 

The  first  of  these  doctrines  is  the  theory  of  knowledge 
as  the  conversion  of  the  true  with  the  created,  Vico's 
substitute  for  the  otiose  criterion  of  the  clear  and  distinct 
perception.  Though  this  conversion  represents  for  Vico 
an  ideal  unattainable  to  man,  it  yet  does  not  bring  with 
it  an  exact  definition  of  the  condition  and  character  of 
knowledge,  the  identity  of  thought  and  being,  without 
which  knowledge  is  inconceivable. 

The  second  is  the  revelation  of  the  nature  of  mathe- 
matics, as  unique  among  the  forms  of  human  knowledge 
in  origin,  rigorous  because  arbitrary,  wonderful  but  unfit 
to  rule  over  and  transform  the  rest  of  our  knowledge. 

Finally,  the  third  doctrine  is  the  vindication  of  the 
world  of  intuition,  empirical  knowledge,  probability,  and 
authority,  all  those  forms  of  experience  which  intellectual- 
ism  ignored  or  denied. 

In  these  points  Vico  the  agnostic,  the  Platonist,  the 
mystic,  was  neither  agnostic  nor  mystic  nor  Platonist. 
He  achieved  a  threefold  advance  upon  Descartes,  and 
upon  all  these  three  heads  criticised  him  conclusively. 

The  one  thing  in  which  Descartes  was  still  in  advance 
of  Vico  was  precisely  that  dogmatism  of  which  Vico 
would  have  none.  Descartes,  whether  he  succeeded  or 
not,  projected  a  perfect  human  science  deduced  from  the 
internal  consciousness.  Vico,  on  the  other  hand,  con- 
sidering the  French  philosopher  too  confident  and 
despairing  of  the  success  of  his  project,  proclaimed  the 
transcendent  nature  of  truth,  took  his  stand  upon  revela- 
tion, and  contented  himself  with  producing  a  metaphysic 
worthy  of  man's  weakness,  humana  imbecillitate  dignam. 
His  was  a  philosophy  of  humility,  as  the  Cartesian  was 
one  of  self-confidence. 

Now  Vico  could  not  advance  even  to  this  position 
without  relaxing  to  some  extent  part  of  his  humility,  and 
taking  over  something  of  Descartes's  confidence:  with- 
out introducing  into  his  Catholic  turn  of  mind  some 


20      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

trace  of  the  leaven  of  that  Protestantism  he  thought  so 
dangerous,  and  venturing  to  conceive  a  philosophy  rather 
less  worthy  of  man's  weakness  and  correspondingly  more 
worthy  of  man,  a  creature  at  once  strong  and  weak,  at 
once  man  and  God.  This  advance  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
next  phase  of  his  thought. 


CHAPTER    II 

VICO'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE  :    SECOND  PHASE 

THE  will  to  believe,  which  in  Vice's  case  was  very  strong, 
and  the  complete  sway  which  the  Catholicism  of  his 
country  and  age  held  over  his  mind,  bound  him  firmly 
down  to  the  Christian  Platonic  metaphysic  and  theory 
of  knowledge  ;  a  theory  whose  inherent  contradictions 
were  prevented  by  the  above  psychological  facts  from 
coming  explicitly  before  his  mind.  The  idea  of  God  at 
once  dominated  and  supported  him  ;  he  neither  had  the 
audacity  nor  realised  the  necessity  to  probe  to  the  bottom 
such  problems  as  the  validity  of  revelation,  the  con- 
ceivability  of  a  God  apart  from  the  world,  or  the  possi- 
bility of  affirming  the  existence  of  God  without  in  some 
sense  demonstrating  and  therefore  creating  him.  For 
Vico  to  open  up  and  partially  traverse  a  new  path,  which 
should  lead  the  human  mind  to  transcend  that  of  the 
Christian  Platonists,  providence — to  use  for  the  moment 
an  idea  of  his  own  which  we  shall  explain  later  on — had 
perforce  to  deceive  him  ;  to  lead  him  by  a  long  and 
circuitous  way  to  the  commencement  of  the  new  path 
without  letting  him  suspect  where  it  would  end. 

The  writings  in  which  Vico  expounds  his  first  theory 
of  knowledge,  De  rations  studiorum  and  De  antiquissima 
Italorum  sapientia,  together  with  the  polemical  works  bear- 
ing upon  them,  belong  to  the  four  years  from  1708  to  1712. 
In  the  following  decade  Vico  was  gradually  led  to  devote 

21 


22       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

himself  more  and  more  to  research  in  the  history  of  law 
and  of  the  State.  He  read  Grotius  as  a  preparation  for 
writing  the  life  of  Antonio  Carafa,  and  plunged  into  the 
controversy  on  Natural  Rights.  He  pursued  his  studies 
of  Roman  law  and  the  science  of  law  in  general,  in  order 
to  fit  himself  for  a  chair  of  jurisprudence  at  Naples  Uni- 
versity. He  pondered  upon  the  origins  of  languages, 
religions,  and  states,  out  of  dissatisfaction  with  his  own 
historical  theories  as  set  forth  in  the  De  antiquissima  ; 
perhaps  also  his  convictions  were  shaken  by  a  well- 
directed  criticism  by  the  editor  of  the  Giornale  del  letterati. 
His  profession,  the  teaching  of  rhetoric,  gave  him  con- 
tinual opportunities  for  meditating  upon  the  nature  and 
relations  of  poetry  and  the  forms  of  language.  Thus 
even  if  it  is  inaccurate  to  say  that  Vico  was  led  to  his 
later  position  culminating  in  the  Scienza  Nuova  by  a 
philological,  not  a  philosophical  process  (since  clearly  a 
philosophical  position  can  only  come  into  being  through 
a  process  no  less  philosophical),  it  is  at  least  certain  that 
the  material  and  stimulus  for  his  new  thought  were 
supplied  by  philological  studies. 

These  studies  seem  to  have  impressed  upon  him  a  fact 
of  great  importance  ;  namely,  that  this  subject-matter 
could  only  be  and  had  actually  been  worked  over  by  his 
thought  through  the  aid  of  certain  necessary  principles, 
appearing  on  every  page  of  the  history  which  he  had 
chosen  for  investigation.  He  had  once  believed  that  the 
moral  sciences,  as  compared  with  the  mathematical 
method,  took  the  lowest  place  as  regards  certainty.  But 
now,  in  his  daily  acquaintance  with  these  sciences,  he  had 
come  to  hold  the  opposite  view  ;  namely,  that  nothing 
could  be  firmer  than  the  foundation  of  the  moral  sciences. 
This  certainty  was  not  the  simple  self -evidence  of 
Descartes,  in  which  the  object,  however  internal  it  is  said 
to  be,  remains  extrinsic  to  the  subject.  It  was  a  truly 
internal  certainty,  reached  by  an  internal  process.  In 


V ICG'S  THEORY OF  KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE  23 

the  assimilation  of  historical  facts,  Vico  felt  himself  to 
be  making  more  truly  his  own  something  that  already 
belonged  to  him ;  to  be  entering  into  possession  of  what 
was  his  by  right.  He  was  reconstructing  the  history  of 
man  ;  and  what  was  the  history  of  man  but  a  product  of 
man  himself  ?  Is  not  the  creator  of  history  simply  man, 
with  his  ideas,  his  passions,  his  will,  and  his  actions  ?  And 
is  not  the  mind  of  man,  the  creator  of  history,  identical 
with  the  mind  which  is  at  work  in  thinking  it  and  knowing 
it  ?  The  truth  of  the  constructive  principles  of  history 
then  comes  not  from  the  validity  of  the  clear  and  distinct 
idea,  but  from  the  indissoluble  connexion  of  the  subject 
and  object  of  knowledge,  3c" 

The  importance  of  this  new  discovery,  the  discovery 
of  the  truth  which  Vico  now  recognised  in  the  moral 
sciences,  lay  in  the  realisation  of  a  new  implication  of  the 
theory  of  knowledge  laid  down  by  himself  in  the  former 
period  of  his  speculations  ;  namely,  the  criterion  of  truth 
consisting  in  the  "  convertibility  of  the  true  with  the 
created."  The  reason  why  man  could  have  perfect 
knowledge  of  man's  world  was  simply  that  he  had  him- 
self made  that  world.  "  When  it  happens  that  he  who 
creates  things  also  describes  them,  then  the  history  is 
certain  in  the  highest  degree." 

Connected  as  it  thus  was  with  his  earlier  view,  the 
assertion  of  the  possibility  of  the  moral  sciences  did  not, 
to  Vice's  own  mind,  present  the  importance  and  bring 
with  it  the  consequences  of  a  revolution  entirely  over- 
throwing the  structure  of  his  ideas,  and  compelling  him 
to  adjust  them  afresh.  On  the  one  hand,  this  assertion 
seemed  to  him  a  confirmation  of  his  former  doctrine,  a 
new  example  to  be  added  to  those  he  had  already  collected 
of  perfect  knowledge  ;  namely,  God's  knowledge  of  the 
universe  and  man's  of  the  world  of  mathematics.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  seemed  to  be  an  extension  of  the  field  of 
knowledge,  whose  boundaries  (for  definite  boundaries  still 


24      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATT1STA    VICO 

existed)  had  at  first  been  too  narrowly  drawn.  Formerly 
he  had  described  a  small  luminous  sphere  in  the  centre 
of  a  vast  and  dimly  lighted  field ;  now  the  luminous 
sphere  underwent  a  definite  increase  in  size,  and  the 
penumbral  region  a  corresponding  diminution.  This 
increase  involved  no  sort  of  conflict  with  his  religious 
beliefs ;  in  fact,  it  seemed  to  support  them  and  to  gain 
support  from  them  in  turn.  For  did  not  religion  teach 
the  liberty,  responsibility,  and  consciousness  which  man 
has  in  respect  of  his  own  acts  and  creations  ? 

Thus  Vico  did  not  feel  obliged  to  write  a  new  treatise 
on  metaphysics.  It  seemed  enough  to  add  a  mere  post- 
script to  his  former  work,  and  to  correct  to  some  extent 
his  earlier  assertions.  His  new  theory  of  knowledge, 
while  adhering  strictly  to  the  criterion  of  truth  enunciated 
by  him  in  opposition  to  that  of  Descartes — the  principle, 
that  is,  that  only  the  creator  of  a  thing  can  know  it — 
divided  the  whole  of  reality  into  the  world  of  nature  and 
the  world  of  man.  But,  while  it  laid  down  that  the  world 
of  nature  is  created  by  God  and  that  therefore  God  alone 
knows  it,  it  restricted  its  agnosticism  to  this  field.  It 
asserted,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  human  world,  being 
man's  creation,  is  known  by  man.  In  this  way  it  raised 
the  knowledge  of  human  affairs,  formerly  considered 
merely  approximate  and  probable,  to  the  rank  of  perfect 
science ;  and  it  expressed  surprise  that  philosophers 
should  so  laboriously  endeavour  to  attain  to  science  of 
the  world  of  nature,  which  is  a  sealed  book  to  mankind, 
while  passing  over  the  world  of  man,  the  science  of  which 
is  attainable.  The  cause  of  this  error  he  traced  to  the  ease 
with  which  man's  mind,  involved  and  buried  as  it  is  in  the 
body,  feels  bodily  things,  and  the  labour  and  pains  it  costs 
it  to  understand  itself,  as  the  bodily  eye  sees  all  objects 
outside  itself,  but  in  order  to  see  itself  requires  the  help 
of  the  mirror. 

In  everything  else  his  system  remained  unchanged. 


VIC&S  THEORY  OF KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE   25 

Beyond  the  world  of  man  lay  the  supernatural  world, 
inaccessible  to  man,  and  the  world  of  nature,  itself  also 
in  a  sense  supernatural.  Beyond  the  perfect  knowledge 
which  man  could  have  of  himself  lay  the  metaphysic  of 
Christian  Platonism,  now  reduced  to  impotence,  but  con- 
tinuing none  the  less  to  embarrass  mankind.  The  natural 
sciences  were  now,  as  before,  regarded  as  incomplete 
forms  of  knowledge  :  mathematics  as  a  system  of  abstrac- 
tions, absolutely  valid  in  the  abstract  but  in  face  of  reality 
powerless.  The  Aristotelian  syllogism,  the  Stoic  sorites, 
and  the  Cartesian  geometrical  method  were  pursued 
with  the  same  hatred  as  before;  and  the  same  enthusi- 
astic praise  was  lavished  upon  the  induction  advocated 
and  illustrated  in  his  Organum  by  Bacon,  that  "  great 
philosopher  and  great  statesman,"  and  fruitfully  employed 
by  his  countrymen  in  experimental  philosophy. 

Vice's  frequent  claim  to  have  constructed  the  science 
of  human  affairs  on  "  a  strict  geometric  method  "  might 
seem  to  indicate  a  change  of  opinion  as  to  the  applica- 
bility of  that  method.  But  his  continual  warnings, 
during  the  same  period  and  in  the  same  works,  against 
the  use  in  physical  and  moral  questions  of  the  mathe- 
matical method,  which,  "  where  there  are  no  figures  either 
of  lines  or  numbers,  either  gives  us  no  conclusiveness,  or 
else,  instead  of  demonstrating  the  truth,  may  often  give 
an  appearance  of  demonstration  to  falsehood,"  would 
flatly  contradict  the  supposed  change  of  front  were  it 
not  that  we  could  interpret  it  so  as  completely  to  restore 
the  coherence  of  Vico's  thought.  This  interpretation  is 
quite  simple.  Once  the  power  of  converting  the  true  with 
the  created  is  seen  to  attach  to  the  moral  sciences  no 
less  than  to  geometry,  these  sciences  could  and  indeed 
must  develop  on  a  method  analogous  to  the  synthetic 
method  of  geometry,  the  method  which  proceeds  from  a 
truth  to  its  immediate  consequence.  In  this  manner 
they  follow  the  progress  of  the  world  of  man  from  its  ideal 


origin  to  its  perfect  development ;  so  that  the  student 
must  not  hope  to  be  able  to  investigate  these  sciences 
per  saltum,  but  must  traverse  them  from  beginning  to 
end  in  detail,  without  refusing  to  accept  unforeseen  con- 
clusions any  more  than  he  can  refuse  to  do  so  in  geometry ; 
but  concentrating  his  attention  on  the  firmness  of  the  bond 
between  premisses  and  conclusion.  Thus  the  method 
could  be  called  geometric  by  analogy  or  synecdoche  ;  in 
fact,  however,  it  was  essentially  speculative,  and  not 
to  be  confused  with  the  application  of  mathematics  to 
questions  of  morals,  of  which  the  Cartesians  and  Spinoza 
have  left  examples. 

Nor  can  we  agree  without  reservation  to  the  opinion 
of  certain  commentators  that  Vico,  in  asserting  the 
existence  of  a  single  science  of  man,  to  be  studied  in  the 
modifications  of  the  human  mind,  was  retreating  to  the 
position  of  a  follower  of  Descartes.  This  opinion  is  often 
reinforced  by  another  statement  of  Vico's,  namely,  that 
to  conceive  his  New  Science  it  would  be  well  to  return 
to  a  state  of  absolute  ignorance,  as  if  no  philosophers, 
philologists,  nor  books  had  even  existed  in  the  world. 
It  is  true  that  with  the  new  form  of  his  theory  of  knowledge 
Vico  himself  joined  the  ranks  of  modern  subjectivism, 
initiated  by  Descartes.  In  a  sense,  indeed,  he  had  already 
done  so  in  his  activistic  doctrine  of  truth  as  the  recon- 
struction of  the  created.  In  this  quite  general  sense  Vico 
might  himself  be  called  a  Cartesian.  Nevertheless,  if 
he  was  still  behind  Descartes  in  making  his  subjectivism 
a  principle  not  of  the  whole  of  knowledge  but  of  the  know- 
ledge of  the  world  of  man  only,  in  another  way  he  was 
ahead  of  the  French  philosopher,  in  that  for  him  the  truth 
attained  in  the  world  of  man  was  not  static  but  dynamic, 
not  a  discovery  but  a  product,  not  consciousness  but 
science. 

As  for  the  advice  that  one  should  proceed  as  if  there 
were  no  books,  no  philosophical  or  philological  doctrines 


VICO'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE  27 

in  the  world,  its  meaning  is  merely  the  necessity  of  ridding 
oneself  of  all  prejudice,  of  all  common  habitual  assump- 
tions, of  all  accretions  of  memory  and  fancy,  in  order  to 
attain  "  the  state  of  pure  understanding,  empty  of  every 
particular  form,"  which  is  necessary  for  the  discovery 
and  apprehension  of  any  new  truth.  So  far  removed  is 
this  advice  from  the  Cartesian  or  Malebranchian  renuncia- 
tion of  learning  and  authority,  that — to  mention  one 
fact  only — in  the  very  passage  to  which  we  have  just 
referred  we  find  the  warning  that  the  New  Science  pre- 
supposes a  comprehensive  and  varied  mass  both  of 
doctrine  and  of  learning,  the  truths  of  which  it  takes 
over  as  already  known,  and  uses  them  as  terms  in  its 
new  propositions. 

In  a  word,  Vico  in  his  new  theory  of  knowledge  became 
not  more  Cartesian  but  more  Vician — more  himself. 
Descartes  seemed  to  him  not  even  a  serviceable  path  by 
which  to  attain  proof  of  the  possibility  of  constructing 
the  science  of  mind  by  means  of  the  mind.  The  true  path 
was  Vico's  own  criterion  of  truth,  brought  into  relation 
with  its  author's  observations  made  in  the  course  of  his 
historical  studies.  If  we  wish  to  look  for  precedents  in 
the  history  of  philosophy  for  Vico's  theory  of  knowledge  in 
its  second  form,  the  division  between  the  two  worlds  of 
reality  and  the  two  spheres  of  consciousness,  and  the 
preference  for  moral  as  compared  with  natural  studies, 
would  lead  us  back  to  the  position  adopted  by  Socrates 
as  against  the  "  Physiologists  "  of  his  time,  and  the 
feeling  of  religious  mystery  which  brought  the  Athenian 
philosopher  to  a  standstill  in  face  of  the  natural  world 
and  directed  his  efforts  to  the  study  of  the  mind  of  man. 
Again,  as  to  the  superior  transparency  of  the  moral 
sciences,  as  dealing  with  objects  created  by  man  himself, 
we  might  recall  the  Aristotelian  division  of  the  sciences 
into  physical,  treating  of  motion  external  to  man,  and 
practical  and  "  poietic,"  which  deal  with  man's  own 


28      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

creations.  The  distinction  passed  into  the  philosophy 
of  the  schools  :  Thomas  Aquinas  speaks  of  nature  as 
"  an  order  which  reason  contemplates  but  does  not  create" 
(ordo  quern  ratio  consider  at  sed  nonfacit),  and  of  the  world 
of  human  activity  as  "an  order  which  reason  creates 
by  contemplation  "  (ordo  quern  ratio  consider ando  facit}. 
But  no  such  reference  is  made  by  Vico,  fond  as  he  was  of 
expressing  the  debt  of  his  own  thought  to  the  ancient 
philosophers  ;  and  admitting  that  the  doctrine  had  some 
force  before  his  time,  the  divergence  between  this  earlier 
view  and  that  of  Vico  on  the  knowableness  of  the  world 
of  man  is  as  great  as  that  between  the  assertion  of  the 
omniscience  of  God  the  Creator  and  the  theory  of  know- 
ledge which  Vico  was  able  to  draw  from  it. 

Of  this  theory,  his  doctrine  of  the  moral  sciences  was 
neither  more  nor  less  than  the  first  legitimate  application. 
Both  its  author  and  the  majority  of  his  commentators 
are  using  inaccurate  language  in  describing  it  as  a  simple 
extension  of  the  previous  applications — a  second  instance, 
added  to  that  of  the  mathematical  sciences,  already 
examined. 

In  the  mathematical  sciences,  the  principle  of  the 
conversion  of  the  true  with  the  created  had  been  applied 
in  appearance  only.  The  principle  itself  was  original  and 
sound :  so  was  the  theory  of  mathematics.  But  the 
connexion  between  the  two  truths  was  altogether  arti- 
ficial and  false.  What  was  lacking  was,  unless  we  are 
mistaken,  an  effective  relation  between  the  concept  of 
God  who  creates  the  world  and,  as  creating  it,  knows  it, 
and  that  of  the  man  who  arbitrarily  constructs  a  world  of 
abstractions,  and  in  doing  so  either  knows  nothing  at  all, 
or  else,  when  he  ceases  to  be  a  geometer  or  arithmetician 
and  becomes  a  philosopher,  when  he  is  composing  not 
Euclid's  Elements  but  the  theory  of  knowledge  in  the 
De  antiquissima,  knows  merely  that  his  procedure  is 
arbitrary.  If  the  mathematical  sciences  construct 


VICaS  THEORY OF  KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE   29 

their  concepts  as  they  please,  if  they  produce  not  truth 
but  definitions,  they  are  as  a  matter  of  fact  not  sciences 
at  all,  nor  any  form  of  knowledge,  and  cannot  be 
compared  with  the  divine  knowledge,  the  knowledge  of 
actual  reality.  In  mathematics,  says  Vico,  "  man,  holding 
within  himself  an  imaginary  world  of  lines  and  numbers, 
operates  in  this  world  by  abstraction  just  as  God  operates 
in  the  universe  by  reality."  It  is  a  luminous  comparison ; 
but  perhaps  its  light  is  that  of  metaphor  rather  than  logic. 

In  the  moral  sciences,  on  the  other  hand,  the  comparison 
is  so  entirely  logical  that  it  should  frankly  be  called  co- 
incidence. Human  knowledge  is  qualitatively  identical 
with  divine,  and  knows  the  world  of  man  equally  well ; 
it  is,  however,  quantitatively  more  restricted,  and  does 
not  extend  like  the  divine  to  the  world  of  nature.  In 
the  human  field  we  no  longer  find  the  expedients  of  weak- 
ness, definitions  and  falsifications ;  knowledge  is  here 
at  its  highest  point  of  concreteness.  Man  creates  the 
human  world,  creates  it  by  transforming  himself  into  the 
facts  of  society  :  by  thinking  it  he  re-creates  his  own 
creations,  traverses  over  again  the  paths  he  has  already 
traversed,  reconstructs  the  whole  ideally,  and  thus 
knows  it  with  full  and  true  knowledge.  Here  is  a  real 
world  ;  and  of  this  world  man  is  truly  the  God. 

It  seems  undeniable,  then,  that  the  application  of  the 
"  verum-factum  "  made  in  the  New  Science  is  the  only 
one  which  corresponds  to  the  criterion  previously  for- 
mulated. The  earlier  attempt  at  an  application  of  it  to 
mathematics,  though  important  in  other  respects  and 
well  calculated  to  free  the  mind  from  mathematical 
prejudice,  cannot  be  considered  a  true  or  strict  use  of  it. 
It  is  possible  that  Vico  was  sometimes  vaguely  conscious 
of  the  difference  between  the  two  applications,  the  strict 
and  the  metaphorical,  which  as  a  rule  he  confused  and 
treated  as  identical.  The  science  of  the  world  of  man, 
he  says,  proceeds  exactly  as  does  geometry,  which  while 


30       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  G1AMBATTISTA    VICO 

it  constructs  out  of  its  elements  or  contemplates  the 
world  of  quantity,  itself  creates  it ;  but  with  proportion- 
ately greater  reality,  since  order  has  no  connexion  with 
human  affairs,  containing  as  they  do  neither  points, 
lines,  surfaces,  nor  figures.  Another  indication  of  his 
gradually  dawning  consciousness  that  he  had  now  for  the 
first  time  in  his  doctrine  of  the  world  of  man  discovered 
a  true  and  proper  knowledge,  not  a  mere  fiction  of  know- 
ledge, may  perhaps  be  seen  in  the  much  greater  con- 
viction, warmth,  and  enthusiasm  with  which  he  now  uses 
the  epithet  "  divine  "  :  quite  a  different  thing  from  the 
chilly,  if  not  absolutely  ironical,  ad,  Dei  instar  of  the  De 
antiquissima.  The  proofs  of  the  New  Science,  he  says 
more  than  once,  with  fervour,  "  are  divine  hi  their  nature, 
and  should  give  thee,  Reader,  a  divine  joy  :  since  in  God 
knowledge  and  creation  are  one." 

The  conversion  of  the  true  with  the  created  was  bound 
to  react  upon  the  treatment  of  certitude  in  one,  perhaps 
the  chief,  of  the  various  meanings  in  which  Vico  uses 
the  word,  namely,  historical  fact :  the  peculiare,  cerium,  as 
opposed  to  the  commune  or  verum.  This  forms  the  other 
important  section  of  Vico's  second  theory  of  knowledge. 
In  the  former  theory  these  cognitions  were,  as  we  saw, 
legitimised  and  protected  by  being  put  on  a  level  with 
all  other  kinds  of  knowledge,  all  of  them  equally  weak  or 
equally  strong,  being  all  alike  founded  on  probability  or 
authority,  whether  of  the  individual  (autopsy)  or  of 
mankind. 

But  now  that  the  knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and 
its  laws  was  rescued  from  the  region  of  authority  and 
probability,  historical  fact,  although  still  in  a  sense,  by 
its  very  nature,  founded  upon  authority,  was  placed  in 
a  new  light.  The  certain  must  enter  into  a  new  relation, 
confronted  as  it  now  was  not  by  another  certainty,  that 
is,  mere  probable  knowledge  of  the  human  mind,  but  by 
a  truth,  a  piece  of  philosophical  knowledge. 


V ICG'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE  31 

This  relation  is  also  called  by  Vico  the  relation  between 
philosophy  and  philology :  the  former  dealing  with  neces- 
sities of  nature,  necessaria  naturae,  and  contemplating 
the  reason  from  which  issues  the  science  of  truth;  the 
latter  with  decisions  of  the  human  will,  placita  humani 
arbitrii,  and  following  the  authority  whence  comes  know- 
ledge of  the  certain.  The  one  considers  the  universal, 
the  other  the  individual ;  the  one,  as  Leibniz  would  have 
said,  the  verites  de  raison,  the  other  the  verites  de  fait. 
With  Vico  the  distinction  is  not  so  clearly  expressed  : 
in  fact,  authority  as  opposed  to  reason  sometimes,  accord- 
ing to  him,  becomes  a  part  of  reason  itself,  or  is  confused 
with  the  knowledge  of  the  human  will  as  opposed  to  that 
of  rational  volition  ;  but  the  general  sense  is  none  the  less 
quite  plain.  By  philology  Vico  means  not  only  the  study 
of  words  and  their  history,  but,  since  words  are  bound  up 
with  the  ideas  of  things,  he  means  also  the  history  of 
things.  Thus  philologists  should  deal  with  war,  peace, 
alliances,  travels,  commerce,  customs,  laws  and  coinage, 
geography  and  chronology,  and  every  other  subject  con- 
nected with  man's  life  on  earth.  Philology  in  a  word, 
in  Vico's  sense,  which  is  also  the  true  sense,  embraces 
not  only  the  history  of  language  or  literature,  but  also 
that  of  events,  philosophy,  and  politics. 

It  is  true  that  philology,  the  truth  of  fact  or  certitude, 
had  not  always  been  so  brutally  treated  as  it  was  by  the 
Cartesians.  Grotius  had  given  evidence  of  immense 
historical  learning  employed  on  behalf  of  his  doctrine  of 
natural  right.  Gravina,  Vico's  contemporary  and  fellow- 
countryman,  demanded  as  necessary  to  the  student  of 
law  not  only  "  the  art  of  reasoning  "  (ratiocinandi  ars)  but 
"  skill  in  the  Latin  tongue  "  (Latinae  linguae  peritia]  and 
"  knowledge  of  history  "  (notitia  temporum).  And  Leibniz, 
whom  we  have  just  named,  reasserted  the  value  of  learning 
as  against  the  Cartesians,  and  extended  his  patronage, 
en  grand  seigneur,  to  the  varied  collection  of  historical 


32       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

anecdotes  which  he  scattered  freely  over  his  pages.  But 
Vico  observed  that  the  philosophy  and  philology  of  his 
time  always  remained  external  to  one  another,  as  they 
had  been  almost  entirely  in  Greece  and  Rome.  All  the 
quotations  from  historians,  orators,  philosophers,  and 
poets  accumulated  by  Grotius  were  a  mere  embellishment. 
Perhaps  Vico  would  have  passed  the  same  judgment 
upon  the  liberal  use  made  of  history  by  Leibniz,  if  he  had 
known  of  it  and  expressed  his  opinion.  In  reading  the 
works  of  philologists  he  was  conscious  of  such  a  sense  of 
vacuity  and  weariness  in  the  unintelligent  jumble  of 
historical  observations,  that  he  was  almost  led  to  agree 
with  Descartes  and  Malebranche  in  their  hatred  of 
scholarship  :  for  a  time,  in  fact,  he  did  entirely  agree 
with  them.  But  these  two  philosophers — so  his  later 
thought  ran — ought,  instead  of  despising  erudition, 
rather  to  have  asked  whether  it  were  possible  to  reclaim 
philology  to  philosophical  principles  ;  and  the  philolo- 
gists for  their  part,  instead  of  marshalling  facts  for  a 
display  of  learning,  ought  to  strive  to  make  them  the  aim 
of  science.  Philology  must  be  reduced  to  a  science.  This 
was  Vico's  idea  of  the  relation  of  certitude  to  truth,  or 
philology  to  philosophy. 

What  was  the  meaning  of  reducing  philology,  or  history, 
which  is  the  same  thing,  to  a  science  or  philosophy  ? 
Strictly  speaking,  the  reduction  is  impossible :  not  because 
they  deal  with  subject-matter  different  in  kind,  but 
because  their  subject-matter  is  in  point  of  fact  homo- 
geneous. History  is  already  essentially  philosophy.  It 
is  impossible  to  make  the  most  insignificant  historical 
statement  without  moulding  it  with  thought,  that  is 
with  philosophy.  But  since  the  existence  of  this  philo- 
sophical basis  of  philology  was  not  at  that  time  realised, 
indeed  it  was  none  too  often  realised  in  later  times,  and  in 
consequence  easily  denied ;  and  since  most  people,  as  we 
have  seen,  imagined  either  an  aristocratic  geometrical 


VIC&S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE:  SECOND  PHASE   33 

philosophy,  hating  and  avoiding  the  "  profane  mob  "  of 
facts,  or  else,  as  at  first  Vico  did,  a  philosophy  and  a 
history  equally  devoid  of  cogency,  and  merely  matters 
of  opinion  :  for  these  reasons  Vico,  after  the  change  of 
his  philosophical  point  of  view,  now  that  he  had  attained 
to  the  consciousness  of  the  speculative  method  in  the 
science  of  man,  and  understood  more  deeply  the  human 
mind,  was  bound  to  see  how  much  current  history  stood 
in  need  of  reform  and  extension ;  to  feel  the  lack  of  an 
improved  philology  as  a  consequence  of  the  improved 
philosophy,  and  to  express  it  in  terms  of  the  theory  of 
knowledge  by  the  formula  reuniting  philology  to  philo- 
sophy :  "  that  this  second  science,  as  is  fair,  should  be 
the  consequence  of  the  first  "  (ut  haec  posterior,  ut  par  est, 
prioris  sit  consequentia) .  He  was  bound,  in  other  words, 
to  rescue  history  from  its  condition  of  inferiority,  where 
it  was  a  mere  slave  to  caprice,  vanity,  moralising  and 
precept-making,  and  other  irrelevant  aims,  and  to  recog- 
nise its  own  true  end  as  a  necessary  complement  of  eternal 
truth.  Philosophy  nowadays  is  full  of  and  intimate  with 
historical  fact :  and  this  gives  it  greater  breadth  and  a 
more  lively  sense  of  dealing  with  concrete  reality.  This 
is  no  doubt  one  meaning  of  Vice's  formula  concerning 
the  union  of  philosophy  and  philology,  and  the  reduction 
of  the  latter  to  a  science. 

It  is,  however,  certain  that  in  propounding  this  formula 
he  had  in  view  a  further  and,  as  often  happened,  a  different 
meaning.  This  other  meaning  might  be  most  simply 
illustrated  by  comparing  it,  as  Vico  himself  did  with  Bacon 
and  his  "  more  certain  method  of  philosophising "  : 
that  method  which  Bacon  expressed  in  the  title  of  his 
work  by  the  words  Cogitata  et  visa,  and  Vico  proposed  to 
"  transfer  from  the  natural  to  the  human  or  political 
world."  In  a  word,  he  demanded  the  construction  of  a 
typical  history  of  human  society  (cogitare)  which  was 
then  to  be  discovered  in  the  facts  (videre).  Thus  the  ideal 

D 


34      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

construction  would  acquire  certainty  from  the  facts,  and 
the  facts  truth  from  the  ideal  construction  :  authority 
would  be  confirmed  by  reason  and  reason  by  authority. 
He  demanded  a  science  which  should  be  at  once  a  philo- 
sophy of  man  and  a  universal  history  of  nations.  Now 
this  structure  which  he  required — something  intermediate 
between  cogitare  and  videre,  thought  and  experience, 
this  mixture  of  the  two  processes — is  intrinsically  different 
from  the  unity  of  philosophy  and  philology,  in  so  far  as 
that  is  a  philosophical  interpretation  of  factual  data. 
Such  an  interpretation  is  living  history  :  the  other  is 
neither  philosophy  nor  history,  but  an  empirical  science 
of  man  and  society,  drawing  its  materials  from  schemata 
which  are  neither  the  extra-temporal  categories  of  philo- 
sophy nor  the  individual  facts  of  history :  although 
it  can  never  be  constructed  without  philosophical  cate- 
gories and  historical  facts.  It  is  an  empirical  science  ; 
and  as  such,  neither  exact  nor  true,  but  only  approxi- 
mative and  probable,  and  subject  to  verification  and 
correction  from  the  side  both  of  philosophy  and  of  history. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  decide  either  which  of  these 
two  meanings  of  philology  reduced  to  history  is  that  of 
Vico  himself,  since  both  are  included  in  his  thought : 
or  which  is  the  prevailing  one,  since  in  point  of  fact  now 
one,  now  the  other  prevails :  although  the  second,  or 
empirical,  signification  is  the  more  often  formulated. 
We  might  even  say  that  when  Vico  entitled  his  treatise 
Scienza  Nuova,  the  principal  meaning  he  attached  to  this 
"  invidious  "  name  referred  precisely  to  this  empirical 
science,  the  science,  that  is,  which  was  to  be  at  once  a 
philosophy  and  a  history  of  man  :  the  ideal  history  of 
the  eternal  laws  which  govern  the  course  of  all  nations' 
deeds  in  their  rise,  progress,  points  of  rest,  decline  and 
fall.  The  fact  is,  Vico  did  not  and  could  not  unify  the 
two  different  meanings ;  he  maintained  the  duality 
which,  simply  because  it  was  never  made  explicit, 


VlCCfS  THE  OR  Y  OF  KNO  W LEDGE :  SECOND  PHASE   33 

presented  an  appearance  of  unity.  Thus  each  of  the 
tendencies  shown  by  his  interpreters  is  partially  justified  : 
one  group  of  whom  maintain  that  Vico  laid  down  and 
employed  the  speculative  method;  another,  that  his  pro- 
cedure was  both  in  intention  and  in  effect  empirical, 
inductive  and  psychological :  the  former  believing  that 
he  aimed  at  a  systematic  philosophy  of  man,  the  latter 
that  he  was  bent  upon  a  scheme  of  sociology  or  social 
psychology.  Both  views  are  one-sided,  but  the  second 
more  so  than  the  first.  If  there  actually  were  in  Vico 
elements  both  of  Bacon  and  of  Plato,  of  the  empiricist  and 
the  philosopher,  yet  when  we  look  at  his  intellectual 
personality  as  a  whole,  when  we  penetrate  into  the  depths 
of  his  mind  and  share  in  his  difficulties  and  his  colossal 
labours,  we  must  recognise  that  whatever  he  meant  and 
believed  Vico  was  of  the  stuff  of  a  Plato  and  not  a  Bacon  : 
that  even  the  Bacon  of  whom  he  speaks  is  in  part  his  own 
invention,  a  Bacon  tinged  with  Platonism  :  and  that  the 
New  Science  seemed  so  new  to  him  fundamentally,  not 
because  it  was  an  empirical  structure  on  Bacon's  lines — 
indeed  in  that  case  no  science  could  be  older :  we  need 
only  cite  Aristotle's  Politics  and  Machiavelli's  Discourses, 
— but  because  it  was  impregnated  throughout  by  a  new 
philosophy,  which  did  in  truth  break  into  it  on  every 
side,  through  all  his  empiricism. 


CHAPTER   III 

INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE   NEW  SCIENCE 

THE  lack  of  clearness  on  the  relation  of  philosophy 
to  philology,  and  the  failure  to  distinguish  between  the 
two  quite  different  ways  of  conceiving  the  reduction  of 
philology  to  a  science,  are  at  once  the  consequences  and 
the  causes  of  the  obscurity  which  prevails  in  the  "  New 
Science."  By  this  name  we  refer  to  the  whole  mass  of 
research  and  theory  which  Vico  was  producing  from  1720 
to  1730,  elaborated  above  all  in  three  works,  the  De  uno 
universi  iuris  principio  et  fine  uno  and  the  first  and  second 
Scienza  Nuova  ;  it  attains  its  maturest  and  most  developed 
form  in  the  last  of  these,  and  this  is  the  most  important 
for  reference. 

The  New  Science,  agreeably  to  the  various  meanings 
of  the  terms  philosophy  and  philology  and  of  the  relation 
between  them,  consists  of  three  groups  of  investigations, 
philosophical,  historical  and  empirical.  Altogether  it 
contains  a  philosophy  of  mind,  a  history,  or  group  of 
histories,  and  a  social  science.  To  the  first  namefl  belong 
the  ideas  expressed  in  various  axioms  or  aphorisms 
scattered  up  and  down  the  work,  on  imagination  and 
the  imaginative  universal,  on  the  intellect  and  the  logical 
universal,  on  myth,  religion,  the  moral  judgment,  force 
and  law,  certitude  and  truth,  the  passions,  providence, 
and  all  the  other  determinations  affecting  the  course  or 
development  of  the  thought  or  mind  of  man.  To  the 

36 


INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  NEW  SCIENCE  37 

second,  namely  history,  belong  the  sketch  of  a  universal 
history  of  primitive  peoples  from  the  time  of  the  Flood, 
and  of  the  origins  of  the  various  civilisations :  the 
description  of  the  ancient  barbaric  or  heroic  society  in 
Greece  and  especially  in  Rome,  with  regard  to  religion, 
customs,  law,  language  and  political  constitution  :  the 
study  of  primitive  poetry,  concentrating  upon  the  deter- 
mination of  the  genesis  and  character  of  the  Homeric 
poems :  the  history  of  the  social  struggles  between  the 
patricians  and  plebeians  and  the  origin  of  democracy, 
also  studied  chiefly  in  Rome  :  and  the  description  of  the 
return  of  barbarism  or  the  Middle  Ages,  also  studied  in 
all  aspects  of  life  and  compared  with  primitive  barbaric 
society.  Finally,  to  empirical  science  belongs  the  attempt 
to  establish  a  uniform  course  of  national  history,  dealing 
with  the  succession  both  of  political  forms  and  of 
other  correlative  manifestations  of  life  both  theoretical 
and  practical,  and  the  series  of  types  successively  drawn 
by  Vico  of  the  patriciate,  the  plebs,  feudalism,  the  patri- 
archal family,  symbolic  law,  metaphorical  language, 
hieroglyphic  writing  and  so  forth. 

Now  if  these  three  classes  of  inquiry  and  theory  had 
been  logically  distinct  in  Vice's  mind  and  united  and 
compressed  within  the  limits  of  a  single  book  for  literary 
reasons  alone,  the  result  might  have  been  confused,  ill- 
proportioned,  out  of  harmony,  and  therefore  fatiguing 
to  the  reader,  but  not  obscure.  But  in  point  of  fact  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  Scienza  Nuova,  at  least  in  its 
second  form,  the  final  exposition  of  his  thought  given 
by  Vico,  lacks  a  general  plan,  well  enough  conceived. 
The  treatise  is  divided  into  five  books.  The  first  is  in- 
tended to  summarise  general  principles,  that  is,  philosophy. 
The  second,  in  addition  to  a  short  note  on  the  most  ancient 
universal  history,  describes  the  life  of  barbaric  society, 
to  which  the  third,  on  the  discovery  of  the  true  Homer, 
the  most  conspicuous  example  of  barbaric  poetry,  forms 


38      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

an  appendix.  The  fourth  is  meant  to  sketch  the  empirical 
science  of  the  movement  of  national  history  :  and  the 
fifth  to  exemplify  the  movement  of  "reflux"  in  the 
particular  case  of  the  Middle  Ages.  And  yet,  in  spite  of 
this  fine  architectonic  scheme,  the  second  Scienza  Nuova 
is  the  most  obscure,  just  as  it  is  the  most  rich  and  complete 
of  Vico's  works.  If  on  the  other  hand,  while  keeping  his 
ideas  clear  in  his  mind,  Vico  had  used  an  unfamiliar 
terminology  or  a  style  of  exposition  either  too  compressed 
or  too  full  of  allusions  or  implicit  presuppositions,  he 
would  certainly  have  been  a  difficult  writer,  but  in  this 
case,  as  in  the  other,  not  obscure.  But  such  a  hypothesis 
does  not  suit  the  facts.  Vico  is  very  sparing  of  scholastic 
language ;  he  prefers  living  and  popular  terminology. 
He  is  not  compressed  :  in  fact,  he  is  fond  of  repeating 
his  ideas,  emphasising  them  by  repetition  with  great 
insistence.  And  he  lays  all  his  cards  on  the  table  :  that 
is  to  say,  he  shows  all  the  material  by  which  his  doctrines 
have  been  suggested.  Finally,  it  amounts  to  very  little 
to  say  that  Vico  was  not  fully  conscious  of  his  own  dis- 
coveries :  such  consciousness  is  more  or  less  deficient  in 
every  thinker,  and  in  fact  none  could  have  it  more  fully. 
The  obscurity,  the  real  obscurity  which  we  find  in  Vico 
is  not  superficial.  It  does  not  come  either  from  merely 
general  or  from  secondary  causes.  It  really  consists  in 
the  obscurity  of  his  ideas ;  in  his  insufficient  under- 
standing of  certain  connections,  and  the  substitution  for 
them  of  fallacious  ones  ;  in  the  arbitrary  element,  that 
is,  which  he  introduces  into  his  thought,  or  to  put  it  more 
simply  in  his  own  downright  errors.  One  might  re- 
write the  New  Science,  recasting  the  order  and  changing 
and  elucidating  the  terminology — the  present  writer  has 
made  the  attempt  for  himself — and  still  the  obscurity 
would  remain,  or  even  increase  ;  for  in  such  a  translation 
the  work  in  losing  its  original  form  would  lose  also  the 
turbid  but  powerful  strength  which  may  at  times  take 


INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  NEW  SCIENCE  39 

the  place  of  clarity,  and,  while  it  does  not  illuminate, 
stirs  the  reader's  mind  and  generates  waves  of  thought 
as  it  were  by  sympathetic  vibrations. 

That  Vico's  obscurity,  his  mistake  or  mistakes,  is  due 
to  the  confusion  or  lack  of  distinction  in  his  theory  of 
knowledge  mentioned  above,  on  the  question  of  the 
relations  between  philosophy,  history  and  empirical 
science — a  confusion  which  exists  no  less  in  his  actual 
thought  on  the  problems  of  the  mind  and  history  of  man 
— that  this  is  so  can  be  seen  by  observing  how  philosophy, 
history  and  empirical  science  pass  into  each  other  by 
turns  in  Vico's  mind,  and  vitiating  each  other  in  turn 
produce  the  perplexities,  ambiguities,  exaggerations  and 
hasty  statements  which  perturb  the  reader  of  the  New 
Science.  The  philosophy  of  mind  masquerades  now  as 
empirical  science,  now  as  history  :  empirical  science  now 
as  philosophy,  now  as  history :  and  historical  propositions 
assume  the  universality  of  philosophical  principles  or 
the  generality  of  empirical  schemata.  For  example,  the 
philosophy  of  man  undertakes  to  determine  the  forms, 
categories  or  ideal  moments  of  mind  in  their  necessary 
succession,  and  in  this  aspect  it  well  deserves  the  title  or 
definition  of  "  eternal  ideal  history  "  according  to  which 
particular  histories  proceed  in  time ;  while  no  fragment 
however  small  of  actual  history  can  be  conceived  in  which 
this  ideal  history  is  not  present.  But,  since  ideal  history 
is  also  for  Vico  the  empirical  determination  of  the  order 
in  which  the  forms  of  civilisations,  states,  languages, 
styles,  and  kinds  of  poetry  succeed  one  another,  it  comes 
about  that  he  conceives  the  empirical  series  as  identical 
with  the  ideal  series,  and  as  deriving  validity  from  it. 
Hence  he  asserts  that  this  series  must  always  be  exactly 
reproduced  in  the  facts,  "  even  if  infinite  worlds  were 
produced  from  time  to  time  through  eternity "  :  an 
assertion  which  is  plainly  false,  since  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  empirical  fact  of  Greek  or  Roman  aristocracy 


40       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

should  be  repeated  for  ever,  with  a  "  must  have  been, 
must  be  now,  must  be  hereafter  "  ;  or  why  civilisations 
should  rise  and  fall  precisely  as  did  those  of  antiquity. 
And  this  very  treatment  of  the  empirical  course  of  events 
as  absolute  threw  a  shadow  of  empiricism  over  their 
ideal  course ;  since  the  latter  once  identified  with  the 
former  took  over  its  empirical  and  temporal  character 
instead  of  the  eternal  and  extra  -  temporal  character 
which  it  had  as  originally  conceived.  The  same  must 
be  said  of  the  various  forms  of  mind  which,  as  ideal  and 
extra  -  temporal,  are  always  all  present  in  every  fact ; 
but  Vico,  by  confusing  them  with  the  real  and  concrete 
facts  which  empirical  science  splits  up  into  its  schemata, 
destroyed  them  in  their  ideal  form  and  distinction  as 
soon  as  he  had  stated  them.  It  is  true  that  the  moment 
of  force  is  not  that  of  justice  ;  but  the  empirical  type  of 
barbaric  society  founded  upon  force,  precisely  because 
it  is  a  representative  and  approximative  determination, 
and  is  referred  to  a  concrete  and  total  state  of  things,  con- 
tains not  only  force  but  justice  as  well ;  and  when  this 
ideal  moment  and  this  type  of  society  are  interchanged 
and  treated  as  identical,  on  the  one  hand  the  philosophical 
concept  of  force  is  confused  with  that  of  justice  and 
becomes  impure,  contradictory  and  incoherent,  and  finally 
annuls  itself  :  on  the  other,  the  empirical  type  of  barbaric 
society  becomes  exaggerated  and  unduly  rigid.  The 
confusion  between  the  philosophic  and  the  empirical  is 
clearly  expressed  in  Vico's  aphorism  defining  the  nature 
of  things.  "  Nature  of  things  is  nothing  else  than  their 
production  at  certain  times  and  in  certain  manners  : 
and  whenever  these  latter  are  of  such  a  kind,  then  the 
things  produced  are  of  such  a  kind  and  no  other."  Here 
we  see  the  confusion  between  time  and  manner,  between 
ideal  and  empirical  genesis.  Similarly,  it  is  perfectly 
true  that  history  ought  to  proceed  in  harmony  with 
philosophy,  and  that  a  philosophical  absurdity  can  never 


INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  NEW  SCIENCE   41 

be  a  historical  event :  but,  since  the  distinction  between 
philosophy  and  empirical  science  was  not  drawn  by  Vico, 
when  evidence  was  lacking  and  philosophy  therefore 
inapplicable  he  felt  no  less  sure  of  attaining  truth.  He 
merely  filled  the  gap  with  a  conjecture  supplied  by  the 
schema  of  empirical  science,  and  persuaded  himself  that 
he  had  fallen  back  on  a  "  metaphysical  proof."  Or 
again,  if  he  found  himself  faced  by  uncertain  facts,  instead 
of  patiently  waiting  till  the  discovery  of  further  evidence 
should  dispel  the  doubt,  he  cut  the  knot  by  accepting  the 
facts,  as  he  put  it,  in  conformity  with  laws  :  which  always 
means  the  empirical  schema.  A  legitimate  method, 
doubtless,  when  treated  as  hypothetical.  But  this 
hypothesis  became  in  its  turn,  for  Vico,  a  "  truth  meditated 
in  the  idea  "  :  so  that  the  comparison  with  facts,  which 
none  the  less  he  recommends  for  the  sake  of  confirmation, 
became  strictly  speaking  superfluous  :  or,  if  the  com- 
parison showed  that  the  facts  disagreed  with  it,  the  facts, 
as  mere  appearance,  must  be  in  the  wrong,  rather  than 
the  hypothesis,  which  is  laid  down  as  philosophical  truth, 
and  therefore  indubitable.  Hence  arises  the  tendency 
observed  in  Vico  to  do  violence  to  the  facts. 

These  examples  are  enough  to  indicate  the  deep- 
seated  fault  in  the  structure  of  the  New  Science,  and 
to  establish  one  point  in  our  exposition  and  criticism 
of  Vico's  thought,  in  the  course  of  which  many  other 
examples  of  the  same  point  will  arise  of  themselves,  and 
those  already  given  will  become  more  clear.  But  another 
point  which  must  be  well  established  is  that  this  fault  is 
the  fault  of  an  organism  in  the  highest  degree  healthy,  and 
that  the  different  species  of  inquiry  between  which  Vico 
failed  to  distinguish  were  composed  of  investigations  of 
extraordinary  originality,  truth,  and  importance.  It  is 
in  fact  the  fault  often  found  in  highly  original  and  in- 
ventive intellects,  which  seldom  work  out  their  discoveries 
in  accurate  detail,  while  less  inventive  minds  are  generally 


42       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

more  precise  and  logical.  Depth  and  acuteness  do  not 
always  flourish  equally  side  by  side  :  and  Vico,  however 
much  he  fell  short  in  acuteness,  was  always  profoundly 
deep. 

Light  and  shade,  truth  and  error,  which  alternate  and 
interweave  at  almost  every  point  in  the  New  Science,  are 
variously  distinguished  according  to  the  various  tempera- 
ments of  readers  and  critics  :  and  in  conspicuous  cases, 
like  that  of  Vico,  such  variations  assume  the  most  sharply 
denned  form.  Some  minds  are  self-willed  and  suspicious, 
quick  to  mark  any  trifling  contradiction,  merciless  in 
demanding  proof  of  every  statement,  and  indefatigable  in 
wielding  the  forceps  of  dilemma  to  dismember  an  un- 
fortunate great  man.  For  them  Vico's  work,  like  many 
others  of  the  same  kind,  is  a  closed  book.  At  most,  it  will 
provide  them  with  a  theme  for  what  is  known  as  a  "  refuta- 
tion" :  an  easy  and  congenial  task,  yet  hardly  a  successful 
one,  since  the  man  they  have  demolished  generally  emerges 
from  the  slaughter  more  alive  than  before.  But  there 
is  another  type  of  mind,  which,  at  the  first  word  which 
reaches  the  heart,  at  the  first  ray  of  truth  which  dawns 
upon  the  eyes,  opens  its  whole  self  in  desire,  abandons 
itself  in  faith,  and  grows  wild  with  enthusiasm ;  which 
refuses  to  hear  of  faults  and  never  sees  difficulties,  or 
the  difficulties  at  once  vanish,  and  the  faults  find  the 
easiest  of  justifications :  and  when  it  commits  itself  to 
writing,  its  writings  appear  in  the  guise  of  "  defences." 
For  such  a  mind  we  fear  that  the  New  Science  is  a  book 
all  too  open.  No  doubt,  if  these  two  attitudes  were  the 
only  alternatives,  if  no  third  choice  were  open,  one  would 
have  to  choose  the  fault  of  love  rather  than  that  of  cold 
indifference ;  the  excess  of  faith,  which  may  yet  enrich 
us  by  one  or  two  aspects  of  the  truth,  rather  than  the 
absence  of  faith  which  never  lets  us  realise  one.  But  a 
third  attitude  is  possible  to,  and  indeed  incumbent  on 
the  critic ;  namely,  that  which  never  takes  its  eyes  off 


INTERNAL  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  NEW  SCIENCE  43 

the  light,  but  yet  does  not  conceal  the  shade  ;  which 
transcends  the  letter  to  attain  the  spirit,  yet  not  ignoring 
the  letter,  but  always  returning  to  it,  always  endeavouring 
to  play  the  part  of  a  free  but  not  a  fanciful  interpreter,  a 
warm  lover  but  not  a  blind  one. 

The  two  points  above  established,  the  strength  and 
weakness  essential  to  Vico's  intellect,  his  tendency  to 
confusion  or  his  confusion  of  tendencies,  supply  us  with 
a  kind  of  general  canon  of  interpretation  ;  namely,  that 
of  separating  analytically  at  every  step  his  pure  philosophy 
from  the  empiricism  and  history  with  which  he  mixes, 
and  in  which  so  to  speak  he  embodies  it,  and  on  the  other 
hand  separating  the  latter  from  the  former :  and  of 
observing,  in  the  process,  the  causes  and  effects  of  the 
mixture.  The  dross  cannot  be  treated  as  non-existent, 
bound  up  as  it  is  with  the  gold  in  its  natural  state  :  but 
it  must  not  hinder  us  from  recognising  and  purifying  the 
gold.  Or,  to  drop  the  metaphor,  the  history  must  be 
indeed  a  history,  but  that  it  can  only  be  if  guided  by 
intelligence. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
(POETRY  AND  LANGUAGE) 

THE  chief,  almost  indeed  the  only,  forms  of  the  mind 
studied  by  Vico  in  the  New  Science  are  the  inferior, 
individualising  activities  to  which  he  gives  the  general 
name  of  "  certitude."  These  are,  in  the  region  of  theoretic 
mind,  imagination  :  in  that  of  the  practical  mind,  power 
or  will :  and  in  the  empirical  science  corresponding  to 
the  philosophy  of  mind,  the  barbaric  society  and  poetic 
wisdom  whose  examination  occupies,  in  his  own  words, 
"  almost  the  whole  bulk  of  the  work." 

His  deep  interest  in  these  lower  forms,  and  in  the 
primitive  societies  and  barbaric  histories  which  display 
them,  is  further  illustrated  and  explained,  among  his 
external  circumstances,  by  the  studies  he  under- 
took in  Roman  law  and  its  expressions  and  rhetorical 
figures  :  by  the  still  living  tradition  of  Italian  humanism : 
by  the  recently  stimulated  pursuit  of  the  archaeological 
sciences  :  by  his  own  desire  to  investigate  the  earliest 
civilisation  of  Italy,  and  so  forth.  But  many  of  his 
contemporaries  and  countrymen  were  handling  the  same 
materials  without  acquiring  any  of  his  taste  for  and  com- 
prehension of  imagination,  simplicity  and  force  :  indeed 
Vico  himself,  when  he  wrote  the  De  antiquissima,  had  the 
taste  for  these  things  but  as  yet  no  comprehension  of 
them.  The  full  reason  for  this  interest  is  seen  when  we 

44 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       45 

consider  the  development  of  Vico  as  a  philosopher,  without 
losing  sight  of  the  complexity  of  his  nature  in  all  its 
opposition  to  the  Cartesian  type  of  mind.  Cartesianism, 
with  its  attention  confined  to  the  universalising  and 
abstractive  forms,  ignored  the  individualising  :  and  this 
necessarily  attracted  Vico  all  the  more  towards  them  as 
towards  a  mysterious  problem.  Cartesianism  shrank  in 
horror  from  the  tangled  forest  of  history  :  Vico  plunged 
eagerly  into  that  very  department  of  history  where  the 
historical  flavour,  so  to  speak,  is  strongest ;  namely, 
that  which  is  furthest  and  psychologically  most  different 
from  civilised  periods.  Cartesianism  extended  the  psy- 
chology of  civilisation  to  all  periods  and  nations  :  Vico 
was  led  to  investigate  in  all  their  profound  divergencies 
and  contradictions  the  modes  of  feeling  and  thought 
proper  to  various  times. 

The  great  effort  which  had  to  be  made,  and  actually 
was  made  by  Vico,  in  order  to  penetrate  through  modern 
intellectualism  and  recapture  the  point  of  view  of  primi- 
tive psychology,  is  expressed  in  his  language  about  the 
"  grave  difficulties  "  entailed  by  his  "  labour  of  fully 
twenty-five  years  "  in  the  attempt  to  "  stoop  from  these 
civilised  natures  of  ours  to  those  absolutely  wild  and 
savage  minds,  which  we  cannot  picture  to  ourselves  at 
all,  and  can  only  understand  with  great  toil/'  It  is 
expressed  again,  rather  differently,  by  his  insistence  on 
the  impossibility,  now  that,  even  with  the  common 
people,  the  mind  of  man  is  too  completely  separated 
from  the  senses,  accustomed  to  the  free  use  of  abstract 
terms,  sharpened  by  the  art  of  writing,  and  spiritualised 
so  to  speak  by  the  employment  of  numbers, — the  impossi- 
bility of  entering  into  the  chaotic  fancy  of  primitive  man, 
whose  mind  was  the  very  reverse  of  abstract,  acute  or 
spiritual;  but  rather  sunk  in  the  senses,  blunted  by  passion, 
and  buried  in  the  body  :  and  of  grasping  such  ideas  as 
that  of  the  "  sympathy  of  nature."  This  necessary  effort 


46      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

— a  painful  one,  but  successful — was  another  reason  for 
his  feeling  that  his  science  was  "  new."  He  says  indeed 
that  this  study  of  the  ideal  form  and  the  historic  period 
of  certitude  was  entirely  lacking  to  Greek  philosophy  as 
a  whole.  Plato  had  attempted  it  in  the  Cratylus,  but 
unsuccessfully,  because  he  knew  nothing  of  the  language 
of  the  first  legislators,  the  heroic  poets,  and  was  deceived 
by  the  altered  and  modernised  forms  under  which  the 
laws  existed  in  his  time  after  continual  revision  at  Athens. 
Among  the  moderns,  J.  C.  Scaliger,  Francisco  Sanchez 
and  Caspar  Schopp  had  fallen  into  a  similar  mistake 
when  they  attempted  to  explain  language  by  the  principles 
of  logic,  and  indeed  of  Aristotelian  logic,  in  spite  of  its 
having  arisen  centuries  after  language  itself.  Grotius, 
Selden,  Puffendorf  and  the  other  writers  on  natural  rights 
also  studied  human  nature  as  civilised  by  religion  and 
law  ;  so  that  in  retracing  the  course  of  history  they  began 
in  the  middle :  that  is  to  say,  they  confined  themselves  to 
the  intellect,  ignoring  the  imagination,  and  to  the  will 
under  moral  restraint,  passing  over  the  undisciplined 
passions.  Vico  himself,  while  he  had  shown  his  interest 
in  this  problem  by  undertaking  to  investigate  the  "  most 
ancient  wisdom  of  Italy,"  was  yet  led  astray  in  his  study 
by  following  the  lead  of  the  author  of  the  Cratylus. 

In  its  philosophical  aspect,  the  New  Science  might, 
owing  to  this  prominence  given  to  the  study  of  the  indi- 
vidualising forms,  above  all  the  imagination  (since  the 
doctrine  that  primitive  man  is  a  poet  and  thinks  in  poetic 
images  is  in  Vice's  words  the  "  master  key  "  of  the  work) 
be  called,  without  undue  paradox,  a  philosophy  of  Mind 
with  special  attention  to  the  Philosophy  of  Imagination 
or  Aesthetic. 

Aesthetic  may  in  fact  be  considered  as  a  discovery  of 
Vice's,  though  with  the  reservations  to  which  the  deter- 
mination of  discoveries  and  discoverers  is  always  subject  ; 
and  although  he  did  not  deal  with  it  in  a  separate  treatise 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE      47 

or  give  it  the  happy  title  with  which  Baumgarten  christened 
it  ten  years  or  so  later.  It  is  interesting  however  to  notice 
that  the  terminology  of  the  New  Science  lights  upon  a 
name  similar  to  one  of  the  equivalents  for  Aesthetic 
which  Baumgarten  passes  in  review ;  namely  that  of 
"  the  Logic  of  Poetry."  But  ultimately  the  name  matters 
little  :  what  does  matter  is  the  fact :  and  the  fact  is  that 
Vico  adopted  a  theory  of  poetry  which  was  then  and  was 
still  for  a  time  to  be  a  bold  and  revolutionary  innovation. 
At  that  time,  as  is  well  known,  the  old  practical  or  didactic 
theory  held  the  field :  the  theory  which,  starting  late  in 
the  history  of  the  ancient  world,  persisting  through  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  transplanted  into  the  Renaissance, 
regarded  poetry  as  an  ingenious  disguise  for  the  popular- 
ising of  lofty  philosophical  and  theological  ideas.  Beside 
this  theory,  though  inferior  in  authority,  stood  another, 
which  considered  poetry  as  the  product  of  or  means  to 
diversion  and  pleasure.  These  views  had  come  to  alter  the 
original  meaning  of  the  Aristotelian  treatise  on  poetry, 
so  as  to  be  at  last  introduced  into  it  and  discovered  there 
as  if  Aristotle  himself  had  held  and  written  them.  Nor 
was  this  mistake  corrected  by  Cartesianism,  which,  as 
we  should  expect  from  its  general  direction,  rather  tended 
to  enfeeble  and  annul  the  very  object  of  these  definitions, 
as  a  thing  of  no  value,  or  practically  none.  At  a  time 
when  philosophers  were  trying  to  reduce  metaphysics 
and  ethics  to  a  mathematical  form,  and  despised  concrete 
intuition:  when  men  were  devising  a  literature  and  a  poetry 
suited  to  disseminate  science  among  the  common  people 
or  the  world  of  fashion  :  when  experiments  were  being 
made  in  the  construction  of  artificial,  logical  languages, 
superior  to  those  of  past  or  present  usage  :  when,  finally, 
it  was  thought  possible  to  lay  down  rules  for  composing 
musical  airs  without  being  a  musician,  and  poems  without 
being  a  poet :  in  this  atmosphere  of  detachment,  coolness, 
hostility  and  mockery,  only  a  miracle  could  arouse  a 


48       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

different  and  indeed  opposite  feeling — a  warm  and  vivid 
consciousness  of  the  real  nature  of  poetry  in  its  original 
function :  and  this  miracle  was  worked  by  the  keen,  restless 
and  stormy  mind  of  Giambattista  Vico. 

He  criticised  at  once  the  three  doctrines  of  poetry  as  a 
means  of  adorning  and  communicating  intellectual  truth, 
as  merely  subservient  to  pleasure,  and  as  a  harmless 
mental  exercise  for  those  who  can  do  it.  Poetry  is  not 
esoteric  wisdom  :  it  does  not  presuppose  the  logic  of  the 
intellect :  it  does  not  contain  philosophical  judgments. 
The  philosophers,  in  finding  these  things  in  poetry,  have 
simply  put  them  there  themselves  without  realising  it. 
Poetry  is  produced  not  by  the  mere  caprice  of  pleasure, 
but  by  natural  necessity.  It  is  so  far  from  being  super- 
fluous and  capable  of  elimination,  that  without  it  thought 
cannot  arise :  it  is  the  primary  activity  of  the  human 
mind.  Man,  before  he  has  arrived  at  the  stage  of  forming 
universals,  forms  imaginary  ideas.  Before  he  reflects 
with  a  clear  mind,  he  apprehends  with  faculties  confused 
and  disturbed  :  before  he  can  articulate,  he  sings  :  before 
speaking  in  prose,  he  speaks  in  verse :  before  using 
technical  terms,  he  uses  metaphors,  and  the  metaphorical 
use  of  words  is  as  natural  to  him  as  that  which  we  call 
"  natural."  So  far  from  being  a  fashion  of  expounding 
metaphysics  poetry  is  distinct  from  and  opposed  to 
metaphysics.  The  one  frees  the  intellect  from  the  senses, 
the  other  submerges  and  overwhelms  it  in  them  :  the  one 
reaches  perfection  in  proportion  as  it  rises  to  universality, 
the  other,  as  it  confines  itself  to  the  particular  :  the  one 
enfeebles  the  imagination,  the  other  strengthens  it.  The 
one  takes  precautions  against  turning  the  mind  into  body, 
the  other  delights  in  giving  body  to  the  mind.  The  judg- 
ments of  poetry  are  composed  of  sense  and  emotion,  those 
of  philosophy  are  composed  of  reflection,  which  if  intro- 
duced into  poetry  makes  it  frigid  and  unreal :  and  no  one 
jn  the  whole  course  of  history  has  ever  been  at  once  a 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       49 

great  poet  and  a  great  metaphysician.  Poets  and  philo- 
sophers may  be  called  respectively  the  senses  and  the 
intellect  of  mankind  :  and  in  this  sense  we  may  retain  as 
true  the  scholastic  saying  "  there  is  nothing  in  the  intellect 
which  was  not  first  in  the  senses."  Without  sense,  we 
cannot  have  intellect :  without  poetry,  we  cannot  have 
philosophy,  nor  indeed  any  civilisation. 

Almost  more  miraculous  than  this  conception  of  poetry 
is  the  fact  that  Vico  saw  into  the  true  nature  of  language, 
a  problem  much  less  canvassed  and  investigated,  and 
no  more  satisfactorily  solved,  by  ancient  and  modern 
philosophy  down  to  the  present  day.  Language  was 
as  a  rule  alternately  confused  with  logic  and  debased  into 
a  mere  external  and  conventional  sign,  or  else  in  despair 
referred  to  a  divine  origin.  Vico  realised  that  the  divine 
origin  was  in  this  case  a  mere  refuge  of  indolence  ;  that 
language  is  neither  logic  nor  convention,  and,  like  poetry, 
is  neither  esoteric  wisdom  nor  due  to  a  decision  or  agree- 
ment. Language  arises  naturally.  In  its  first  form,  men 
express  themselves  "  by  mute  actions,"  or  by  signs,  and 
"  by  bodies  having  natural  connexions  with  the  ideas 
which  they  wish  to  indicate,"  i.e.  by  means  of  symbolic 
objects.  But  in  the  case  both  of  articulated  languages 
and  of  common  speech,  all  philologists  have,  "  with  an 
excess  of  good  faith,"  which  means  a  deficiency  of  insight, 
accepted  the  view  that  meanings  are  decided  at  pleasure  : 
whereas  at  the  so-called  origin  of  language  meanings 
must  have  been  natural,  and  every  common  word  must 
certainly  have  started  from  one  single  individual  of  one 
nation,  and  been  derived  from  the  primitive  language 
of  gestures  and  objects.  In  Latin,  as  in  other  tongues, 
it  is  to  be  noticed  that  almost  all  the  words  are  formed 
to  express  natural  properties,  or  used  by  transference  : 
and  the  greater  part  of  every  language,  in  every  nation, 
is  metaphorical.  The  opposite  opinion  was  due  to  the 
ignorance  of  grammarians,  who,  meeting  with  a  great 

£ 


50       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTJSTA    VICO 

number  of  words  expressing  confused  and  indistinct 
ideas,  and  not  knowing  their  origin,  which  had  formerly 
made  them  lucid  and  distinct,  invented  for  their  own 
peace  of  mind  the  conventional  theory ;  and  dragged  in 
Aristotle  and  Galen  as  against  Plato  and  lamblichus. 
The  serious  objection  generally  brought  against  the  natural 
origin  of  language  and  in  favour  of  the  conventional, 
namely  the  variations  in  the  common  speech  among 
different  nations,  is  solved  by  considering  that  owing  to 
diversities  of  climate,  temperament  and  custom  nations 
looked  at  the  same  useful  or  necessary  objects  in  different 
aspects,  and  hence  produced  different  languages.  This 
is  also  seen  in  the  case  of  proverbs ;  which  are  substan- 
tially identical  maxims  of  human  life,  but  expressed  in 
as  many  different  forms  as  there  are,  or  have  been,  different 
nations.  The  insistence,  then,  with  which  Vico  claims 
to  have  discovered  the  true  origin  of  languages  "  in  the 
principles  of  poetry"  is  of  especial  importance.  On  the 
one  hand,  it  entails  the  assertion  of  the  spontaneous  and 
imaginative  origin  of  language,  and  on  the  other  it  tends 
implicitly  if  not  explicitly  to  suppress  the  dualism  between 
poetry  and  language. 

In  these  principles  of  poetry  Vico  found  not  only  the 
origin  of  languages,  but  also  that  of  letters  or  writing. 
He  pronounced  the  separation  of  the  two  origins,  connected 
as  they  were  by  nature  and  appearing,  in  the  primitive 
dumb  language  of  signs  and  objects,  as  identical,  to  be  a 
mere  mistake  of  the  grammarians.  Here  again,  it  is  no 
case  of  esoteric  wisdom  or  convention.  Hieroglyphics 
were  not  invented  by  philosophers  as  a  means  of  concealing 
the  mysteries  of  their  lofty  thoughts:  they  were  a  universal 
and  natural  necessity  to  all  primitive  peoples  :  and  only 
the  alphabetic  scripts  arose  among  nations  by  a  free 
agreement.  In  other  words  Vico  drew  a  distinction 
(though  in  a  confused  manner)  within  the  so-called  scripts, 
between  those  which  are  true  scripts  and  therefore  con- 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       51 

ventional,  and  others  which  are  directly  expressive  and 
are  therefore  language,  story-telling,  poetry  and  painting. 
These  expressive  scripts  or  languages  are  characterised 
by  the  inseparability  of  content  from  form.  They  are 
poetical  just  in  the  sense  that  the  story  and  its  expression 
are  one  and  the  same  thing,  namely  a  metaphor  common 
to  poetry  and  painting,  so  that  it  could  be  depicted  by  a 
dumb  man  without  verbal  expression.  As  examples, 
Vico  quotes  traditional  anecdotes ;  for  instance,  the 
five  "  real  words  "  (the  frog,  the  mouse,  the  bird,  the 
ploughshare  and  the  bow)  sent  by  Idanturas  king  of  the 
Scythians  to  Darius  when  the  latter  had  declared  war 
on  him  :  and  the  parable  of  the  tall  poppies  which  King 
Tarquin  enacted  before  the  eyes  of  his  son  Sextus's  am- 
bassador, concerning  the  means  of  ruling  Gabii — methods 
of  expression  parallel  to  practices  still  found  among 
savages  and  the  lower  classes  : — and  in  addition  to  these, 
heraldry,  flags,  and  the  emblems  upon  medals  and  coins. 
There  is  a  frivolous  legend  which  belittles  and  degrades 
the  true  value  of  heraldry  by  asserting  it  to  have  been 
invented  in  German  tournaments  as  a  custom  of  gallantry 
by  young  men  seeking  to  win  the  love  of  noble  maidens. 
But  in  the  Middle  Ages  heraldry  was  a  serious  thing. 
It  was,  so  to  speak,  the  hieroglyphic  script  of  the  period  : 
a  wordless  language  to  eke  out  the  poverty  of  ordinary 
speech  and  alphabetic  writing.  It  was  only  later,  in  times 
of  culture,  that  it  became  a  sport  and  a  pleasure,  and 
gallant  and  learned  blazonings  were  adopted  which 
had  to  be  enlivened  by  means  of  mottoes  because  their 
own  meaning  was  now  merely  analogical ;  while  primitive 
and  natural  heraldry  was  dumb,  or  rather  spoke  without 
needing  an  interpreter.  Even  in  the  days  of  culture  a 
few  such  expressive  forms  retained  this  simplicity  and 
naturalness.  Flags  or  ensigns  for  instance  form  a  kind  of 
armed  language  with  which  nations,  as  if  deprived  of 
speech,  make  themselves  understood  in  the  wider  affairs 


52       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

of  the  natural  rights  of  peoples ;  wars,  alliances  and 
commerce. 

Thus  in  the  light  of  Vico's  aesthetical  idea  poetry, 
words,  metaphors,  writing  and  graphic  symbols  are  all 
illuminated  and  spring  to  life  :  great  things  and  small, 
epic  poetry  and  heraldry.  The  doctrine  of  imaginary 
forms  was  quite  a  new  departure  in  the  history  of  ideas  : 
for  while  Vico  opposed  his  own  conceptions  to  those  of 
the  contemporary  schools,  especially  the  Cartesian,  he 
by  no  means  attached  himself  to  any  other  more  or  less 
remote  school  or  tradition.  He  himself  felt  that  he  was 
opposed  not  to  a  particular  school  but  to  all  who  had 
ever  formulated  doctrines  on  the  subject.  He  says  that  he 
has  "  overturned  "  all  the  theories  about  poetry  held  by 
Plato,  Aristotle,  and  so  on  down  to  Patrizio,  Scaliger 
and  Castelvetro  in  modern  times,  all  of  whom  had 
lost  themselves  in  ineptitudes  which  "  even  to  mention 
makes  one  ashamed."  Patrizio  made  poetry  begin 
with  the  songs  of  birds  and  the  whistling  of  the  wind  ! 
As  regards  language,  he  had  been  ultimately  dissatisfied 
both  with  Plato  and  with  the  moderns  Wolfgang  Latius, 
Scaliger  and  Sanchez.  As  regards  writing,  once  the 
theory  of  divine  origin  supported  by  Mallinkrot  and 
Ingewald  Eling  was  refuted,  or  rather  interpreted  in  his 
own  way,  which  came  to  the  same  thing,  he  made  an 
attempt  to  discredit  the  futile,  vague,  ill-founded,  mis- 
shapen, pompous  and  absurd  opinions  which  derived  it 
from  the  Goths  and  through  them  from  Adam  and  per- 
sonal instruction  from  God,  or  more  directly  from  the 
Earthly  Paradise,  or  from  a  Gothic  Mercury  as  inventor. 
Finally,  as  to  heraldry,  he  remarks  that  the  writers  on  the 
subject  have  never  understood  anything  about  it,  and 
have  only  by  a  mere  random  guess  let  fall  a  hint  of  the 
truth  in  calling  it  "  heroic." 

In  fact  it  would  be  hard  to  find  real  and  true  precedents 
for  Vico's  aesthetic  conceptions.  At  most,  we  might 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       53 

indicate  vague  suggestions  contained  in  various  scattered 
statements  which  he  collects :  a  certain  immediate 
stimulus  in  the  discussions  of  the  seventeenth  century 
on  the  distinctions  between  intellect  and  genius,  reason 
and  imagination,  dialectic  and  rhetoric :  and  a  certain 
convergence  of  external  particulars,  such  as  the  col- 
lection of  rhetorical  subtleties  expressed  in  subtleties 
of  language,  made  by  Tesauro,  a  rhetorician  of  the 
time. 

These  conceptions,  however,  produced  as  they  were 
by  a  remarkable  stroke  of  originality,  no  sooner  passed 
from  general  outline  to  particular  determinations,  from 
the  first  idea  or  inspiration  to  concrete  development, 
than  they  appear  to  become  confused,  fluctuating  and 
unstable.  We  may  set  aside  the  various  opinions  suc- 
cessively held  by  Vico,  and  bound  up  with  the  historical 
growth  of  his  mind,  upon  the  subjects  of  poetry,  language 
or  metaphor,  beginning  with  his  academic  orations,  pass- 
ing thence  by  way  of  the  De  ratione  and  De  antiquissima  to 
the  Diritto  universale,  from  these  to  the  first  and  thence 
to  the  second  Scienza  Nuova  :  a  study  of  these  might 
supply  subject-matter  for  a  special  essay,  but  does  not 
come  within  the  scope  of  our  treatise.  But  even  in  the 
final  form  of  his  aesthetic  thought,  contradictory  doctrines 
exist  side  by  side.  He  is  not  content  with  saying,  as  he 
does  say,  that  poetical  form  is  the  primary  activity  of 
the  mind ;  that  it  is  composed  of  feelings  of  emotion ; 
and  that  it  is  entirely  imaginative  and  devoid  of  concepts 
and  reflection.  He  goes  on  to  add  that  poetry,  as  opposed 
to  history,  "  represents  reality  in  its  best  idea,"  and  there- 
fore fulfils  the  justice  and  gives  every  man  the  reward 
or  punishment  which  he  does  not  always  get  in  history, 
governed  as  the  latter  often  is  by  caprice,  necessity  and 
chance.  Again,  he  says  that  the  end  of  poetry  is  "to  give 
life  to  the  lifeless,"  since  its  most  sublime  task  is  the 
attempt  to  give  life  and  sensation  to  insensible  objects. 


54       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

He  says  that  poetry  is  "  nothing  but  imitation  "  ;  that 
children,  with  their  great  imitative  powers,  are  poets  ; 
and  that  primitive  races,  the  children  of  mankind,  were 
also  sublime  poets.  He  says  that  poetry  has  for  its 
special  subject-matter  "  the  impossible  made  credible  "  : 
for  instance,  it  is  impossible  that  body  should  be  mind, 
and  yet  it  was  believed  that  the  thundering  sky  was 
Jupiter.  Hence  the  miracles  performed  by  magicians 
by  means  of  incantations  were  a  favourite  subject  of 
poetry.  He  says  that  poetry  is  due  to  "  poverty,"  that 
is,  that  it  is  a  pathological  product  of  the  mind.  Since 
uncivilised  man  is  of  low  brain-power  and  cannot  satisfy 
the  thirst  he  feels  for  the  general  and  the  universal,  he 
fills  their  place  by  inventing  imaginary  genera,  poetical 
universals  or  characters.  Consequently  the  truth  of  the 
poet  is  identical  with  the  truth  of  the  philosopher :  the  one 
abstract,  the  other  clothed  in  images :  the  one  a  metaphysic 
of  reason,  the  other  a  metaphysic  of  feeling  and  fancy, 
suited  to  the  understanding  of  the  people.  From  poverty 
also,  that  is  from  inability  to  articulate,  arises  song,  and 
therefore  mutes  and  stammerers  utter  sounds  which  are 
songs  :  and  metaphor  arises  from  inability  to  express 
things  in  an  accurate  manner.  He  says,  finally,  that  the 
aim  of  poetry  is  to  teach  the  people  to  act  virtuously. 

These  sayings  indicate  very  various  ideas  about  poetry, 
of  which  some  are  compatible  with  the  central  doctrine 
but  thrown  out  in  a  disconnected  manner  and  therefore 
not  in  fact  reconciled  with  it :  others  are  quite  incom- 
patible. Vico  might  have  been  cited  in  turn,  on  the 
testimony  of  single  passages,  as  a  supporter  of  the  moralistic 
theory  of  art,  the  didactic  theory,  the  abstract  or  typical 
theory,  the  mythological  theory,  the  animistic  theory, 
and  so  on.  And  if  he  neither  falls  back  into  the  old  theories 
he  hated,  nor  loses  himself  among  the  new  fallacies  which 
followed  him,  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  all  these  waverings 
and  inconsistencies  were  continually  submerged  by  the 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       SS 

thought  that  poetry  is  the  primary  form  of  the  mind, 
prior  to  intellect  and  free  from  reflection  and  reasoning. 

Just  as  he  was  unable  by  the  use  of  his  leading  principle 
to  distinguish  and  reconcile  the  other  theories  on  the 
nature  of  poetry  which  already  existed  or  had  been  in- 
vented by  himself,  so  he  did  not  succeed  in  escaping  from 
the  tyranny  of  old  or  new  empirical  classifications.  He 
struggled  to  reduce  these  in  their  turn  to  philosophical 
form,  and  tried  to  deduce  successively  the  various  kinds 
of  poetry,  epic,  lyric  and  dramatic  :  the  kinds  of  verse 
and  metre,  spondaic,  iambic  and  prose :  the  kinds  of 
figurative  language,  metaphor,  metonymy,  synecdoche 
and  irony  :  the  parts  of  speech,  onomatopoeism,  inter- 
jection, pronoun,  particle,  noun  and  verb :  the  moods 
and  tenses  of  the  verb  (in  which  connexion  he  refers 
to  a  case  of  aphasia  observed  by  himself  in  Naples,  "  a 
gentleman  seized  with  a  severe  apoplexy,  who  utters 
nouns  but  has  completely  forgotten  verbs  "  )  :  the  kinds 
of  writing,  hieroglyphic,  symbolic  and  alphabetical :  and 
of  languages,  according  to  their  increasing  complexity, 
from  monosyllables  to  compound  words  and  from  a 
preponderance  of  vowels  and  diphthongs  to  a  preponder- 
ance of  consonants.  In  the  course  of  these  attempts  he 
frequently  offered  new  and  sometimes  correct  interpre- 
tations of  isolated  facts  :  but  he  did  not  and  could  not 
connect  them  into  a  scientific  system.  Moreover  he 
never  realised  the  relation  between  poetry  and  the  other 
arts.  On  the  one  hand,  he  unites  them,  as  when  he  con- 
siders painting  and  poetry  to  be  fundamentally  identical 
and  notes  a  number  of  analogies  between  the  poetry  and 
painting  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  on  the  other,  he  separates 
them  sharply,  as  when  he  asserts  that  delicacy  in  art  is 
the  outcome  of  philosophy,  and  that  painting,  sculpture, 
casting  and  intaglio  are  the  most  delicate  arts  because 
they  are  compelled  to  abstract  the  surface  of  the  material 
objects  they  represent. 


j6      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

These  inconsistencies  and  errors  which  we  have  briefly 
reviewed  are  due  partly  to  Vice's  insufficient  power 
of  distinguishing  and  elaborating,  partly — and  this  is  the 
greater  part — to  that  fundamental  fault  which  we  have 
already  seen  to  exist  in  the  structure  of  the  New  Science. 
In  this  case  the  fault  is,  more  precisely,  Vico's  confusion 
between  the  philosophical  concept  of  the  poetic  form  of 
the  mind,  and  the  empirical  concept  of  the  barbaric  form 
of  civilisation.  "This  earliest  age  of  the  world,"  as  he 
himself  says,  "  can  be  truly  said  to  have  concerned  itself 
exclusively  with  the  primary  activity  of  the  mind."  But 
the  earliest  age  of  the  world,  composed  as  it  was  of  men  of 
flesh  and  blood,  not  of  philosophical  categories,  cannot 
have  been  concerned  with  one  solitary  activity  of  the 
mind.  This  single  activity  may  have  preponderated, 
as  we  generally  say :  the  very  word  reveals  the  quanti- 
tative and  approximative  nature  of  the  conception  :  but 
all  the  others  must  have  been  at  work  simultaneously, 
imagination  and  intellect,  perception  and  abstraction, 
will  and  morality,  song  and  arithmetic.  Vico  could  not 
shut  his  eyes  to  this  obvious  fact,  and  introduced  into 
this  phase  of  civilisation  not  only  the  poet,  but  also 
the  theologian,  the  physicist,  the  astronomer,  the  pater- 
familias, the  warrior,  the  politician,  and  the  lawgiver ;  but 
he  tried  to  regard  the  activities  of  all  these  as  "poetical" 
in  character,  as  he  called  it,  by  a  metaphor  drawn  from 
the  alleged  preponderance  of  the  imaginative  form  of  the 
mind  ;  and  the  whole  system  he  called  "  poetic  wisdom." 
The  metaphorical  nature  of  the  terminology  is  suggested, 
in  fact  leaps  to  the  eye,  in  certain  characteristic  passages, 
as  where  the  "arts,"  that  is,  the  mechanical  crafts  which 
produce  objects  of  practical  utility,  are  called  "  poetry 
with  a  certain  kind  of  reality,"  and  where  ancient  Roman 
law,  because  of  the  abundance  of  formulae  and  ceremonies 
with  which  it  was  adorned,  is  said  to  be  a  "serious  dramatic 
poem."  But  the  metaphors  are  dangerous,  since,  as 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE      57 

in  the  case  of  the  New  Science,  they  light  upon  a 
soil  favourable  to  their  growth  into  concepts  :  and  in 
point  of  fact  the  historical  phase  of  barbarism,  meta- 
phorically expressed  as  poetic  wisdom,  soon  turned  in 
Vice's  mind  into  the  ideal  phase  of  poetry,  and  trans- 
ferred all  its  own  attributes  to  this  ideal  phase.  The 
former  included  theologians,  and  accordingly  Vico  re- 
garded poetry  as  theology,  but  an  imaginative  theology  : 
teachers,  and  poetry  became  a  teacher,  but  of  the  common 
people  :  natural  scientists,  and  it  became  science,  but  the 
science  of  an  imaginary  world.  And  since  these  bar- 
barians, uncultivated  as  they  were  and  confined  to  the 
world  of  images,  could  not  think  in  concepts,  the  imagin- 
ations of  poetry,  individualised  and  particular,  and  its 
judgments,  always  expressed  in  material  form,  were 
falsely  interpreted  as  "  imaginative  universals,"  supposed 
to  be  something  intermediate  between  the  individualising 
intuition  and  the  universalising  concept.  Poetry,  which 
ought  to  represent  sense  and  nothing  else,  came  to  repre- 
sent a  sense  already  intellectualised  ;  and  the  saying  that 
nothing  is  found  in  the  intellect  that  has  not  already 
been  in  the  sense,  acquired  the  meaning,  that  the  intellect 
is  nothing  but  the  sense  clarified,  and  the  sense  nothing 
but  the  intellect  confused.  Thus  there  was  no  further 
need  for  the  added  caution  "  except  the  intellect  itself  " 
(nisi  intellectus  ipse).  Conversely,  barbaric  civilisation 
became  a  kind  of  mythological  or  allegorical  representation 
of  the  ideal  phase  of  poetry,  and  primitive  tribes  were 
transformed  into  crowds  of  "  sublime  poets  "  just  as, 
in  the  ontogenesis  corresponding  to  this  philogenesis, 
children  had  been  made  into  poets.  The  concept  of  the 
"  imaginative  universal  "  unites  in  itself  the  double  con- 
tradiction of  the  doctrine ;  since  to  the  imaginative 
element  must  be  joined,  in  this  mental  construction, 
the  element  of  universality  which  taken  by  itself  would 
be  a  true  and  proper  universal,  rational  and  not  imagina- 


j<?       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

tive.  Hence  arises  a  petitio  principii  by  which  the 
origin  of  the  rational  universal,  the  point  requiring  ex- 
planation, is  already  presupposed.  On  the  other  hand, 
if  the  imaginative  universal  is  interpreted  as  freed  from 
the  element  of  universality,  that  is,  as  a  mere  imagination, 
Vico's  aesthetic  doctrine  would  certainly  become  once 
more  consistent :  but  his  "  poetic  wisdom  "  or  barbaric 
civilisation  would  be  deprived  of  an  indispensable  portion 
of  its  organism  in  parting  with  every  kind  of  concept : 
for  concepts  are,  so  to  speak,  the  skeleton  of  the  body. 

To  resolve  the  contradiction  it  was  necessary  to 
separate  poetry  from  poetic  wisdom  :  and  we  do  find  some 
signs  of  this  separation  in  Vico.  He  sometimes  admits, 
almost  against  his  will,  the  lack  of  correspondence  between 
the  philosophical  category  and  the  type  of  society,  and  in 
dealing  with  the  latter  is  compelled  to  fall  back  upon 
such  phrases  as  "  very  nearly  "  and  "  more  or  less."  He 
says,  for  instance,  that  primitive  man  consisted  "  ex- 
clusively of  strong  imagination,  with  no,  or  very  little, 
reason  "  :  that  he  was  "  almost  all  body,  with  hardly 
any  reflection  "  :  or  again,  after  making  a  show  of  philo- 
sophical distinction  between  the  three  languages  of  gods, 
heroes  and  men,  he  goes  on  to  observe  that  "  the  language 
of  the  gods  was  almost  all  dumb,  and  very  little  articulate  ; 
the  language  of  heroes  was  composed  of  equal  quantities 
of  articulation  and  dumb-show ;  the  language  of  men 
was  almost  all  articulated,  and  very  little  in  dumb-show." 
He  admits  again  in  a  fine  simile  that  poetic  speech  out- 
lived poetic  wisdom  and  survived  far  into  the  historic 
and  civilised  period,  "  as  great  and  rapid  rivers  run  far 
out  into  the  sea  and  keep  their  waters  fresh  as  they  bear 
them  along  with  the  force  of  their  flow."  Even  in  modern 
times  we  cannot  afford  entirely  to  neglect  imaginative 
speech  :  "to  describe  the  operations  of  the  pure  mind, 
we  must  avail  ourselves  of  poetic  language,  of  metaphors 
drawn  from  the  senses."  It  appears  that  poetry  does 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       S9 

not  end  with  barbarism,  for  poets  arise  even  in  civilised 
times  :  and  if  it  is  said  that  the  poets  of  the  earliest  times 
were  naturally  imaginative,  those  of  later  days  artificially 
so,  that  is,  according  to  Vico,  by  deliberately  forgetting 
the  proper  use  of  words,  freeing  themselves  from  philo- 
sophy, filling  their  minds  with  childish  and  vulgar  pre- 
judices and  submitting  to  the  bondage  of  conventions 
like  the  use  of  rhyme — all  these  restrictions,  besides  being 
easily  refuted,  are  merely  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to 
diminish  the  weight  of  the  fact  above  mentioned,  namely 
that  poetry  belongs  to  all  ages,  not  merely  to  that  of 
barbarism :  it  is  an  ideal  category,  not  a  historic  fact. 
But  the  restrictions  prove,  as  also  do  the  infrequency 
and  the  unemphatic  nature  of  the  passages  quoted,  that 
Vico  was  not  in  a  position  to  effect  the  separation  of  poetry 
from  poetic  wisdom,  hampered  as  he  was  by  the  hybrid 
character  of  the  concept  and  of  the  actual  method  of  the 
New  Science. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  idea  of  poetry  as  pure  imagina- 
tion had  not  remained  firmly  at  the  foundation  of  Vico's 
thought,  in  spite  of  all  the  confusions  and  inconsistencies 
in  which  it  became  involved,  and  had  not  been  at  work 
underground,  so  to  speak,  in  the  New  Science,  it  would 
have  been  difficult  or  perhaps  impossible  to  understand 
the  leading  conception  which  dominates  his  philosophy 
of  mind,  closely  connected  as  it  is  with  that  idea.  This 
is  the  conception  of  the  mind  as  a  development,  or,  to  use 
Vico's  own  words,  a  progress  or  unfolding  (corso,  spiega- 
mento)  ;  a  conception  which  improved  upon,  though  it 
did  not  explicitly  contradict,  the  ordinary  view  which 
was  almost  exclusively  confined  to  the  enumeration  and 
classification  of  the  mind's  faculties.  The  doctrine  of 
imaginative  universals  as  spontaneous  mental  products, 
rudimentary  universals  but  not  without  an  element  of 
truth  in  them,  was  at  least  an  adequate  weapon  against 
the  empirical  theory  which  made  civilisation  the  out- 


60       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

come  of  a  highly  developed  and  rational  practical  wisdom 
and  the  personal  labour  of  God  or  of  wise  men  who  must 
have  sprung  from  the  earth  or  fallen  from  heaven  in  some 
unaccountable  manner. 

Vico  clearly  stated  the  dilemma  between  the  two,  and 
only  two,  possible  explanations  of  the  origin  of  society. 
Either  it  came  from  the  reflection  of  wise  men,  or  from  a 
certain  human  feeling  and  instinct  among  brutish  men. 
He  accepted  the  latter  solution,  that  of  "  brutes  "  which 
gradually  became  human  :  the  theory,  that  is,  of  the 
evolution  of  thought  from  the  imaginative  to  the  rational 
universal,  and  the  progress  of  social  relations  from  force 
to  equity.  But  was  this  an  adequate  foundation  for 
"  ideal  history  "  or  the  philosophy  of  mind  ?  In  the 
philosophy  of  mind,  it  could  be  translated  into  a 
similar  if  not  identical  view — the  doctrine  which,  owing 
to  Cartesianism  and  a  certain  recrudescence  of  the 
Scholasticism  of  Duns  Scotus,  lasted  down  to  Vice's 
own  times  and  expressed  the  life  of  the  mind  by  the  suc- 
cessive stages  of  the  concept,  obscurity,  confusion,  clarity 
and  distinctness.  Leibniz,  as  is  well  known,  made  a 
special  study  of  obscure  and  confused  perceptions,  the 
"Petites  perceptions."  The  doctrine  was  essentially  intellect- 
ualistic,  since  the  concepts,  however  confused  or  obscure, 
were  never  anything  else  than  concepts  :  and  hence  it 
was  unable  to  account  either  for  poetry  or  even  for  mental 
development,  the  dialectic  of  which  cannot  be  understood 
if  it  is  regarded  as  consisting  of  merely  quantitative 
differences.  Such  differences  are  in  reality  not  differences 
at  all,  but  identities  and  therefore  the  negation  of  change  : 
and  in  fact  the  whole  of  this  school  of  thought  was  anti- 
aesthetic  and  static,  devoid  both  of  a  true  theory  of 
imagination  and  a  true  theory  of  development.  Vico's 
thought,  on  the  other  hand,  was  averse  to  intellectual- 
ism  and  in  sympathy  with  imagination :  it  was  entirely 
dynamic  and  evolutionary.  For  Vico,  mind  is  an 


THE  IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE       61 

eternal  drama  :  and  since  drama  demands  antithesis, 
his  philosophy  of  mind  is  rooted  in  antithesis,  that 
is  in  the  real  distinction  and  opposition  between  im- 
agination and  thought,  poetry  and  metaphysic,  force 
and  equity,  passion  and  morality  ;  although  he  seems 
sometimes,  for  the  reasons  given  above,  to  mistake  its 
nature ;  or  rather,  although  he  actually  does  sometimes 
confuse  it  with  empirical  inquiries  and  doctrines,  and  with 
the  determinations  of  history. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  SEMI-IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE 
(MYTH  AND  RELIGION) 

Vico's  doctrine  of  mythology,  while  no  less  original  and 
profound  than  that  of  poetry,  is  also,  like  the  latter,  not 
entirely  lucid :  for  the  relations  between  poetry  and 
myth  are  so  close  that  the  shadow  cast  upon  the  one 
must  of  necessity  extend  to  some  degree  over  the  other. 
In  proceeding  to  inquire,  as  we  have  hitherto  done 
and  shall  continue  to  do,  into  the  state  of  contemporary 
knowledge  of  the  several  sciences  and  problems  with 
which  Vico  set  out  to  deal,  we  may  briefly  recall  h  propos 
of  the  study  of  mythology  not  only  the  great  literary 
collections  of  myths  formed  during  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  of  which  Boccaccio  had  already 
given  an  example  in  the  fourteenth  century,  but  also 
the  learned  defences  of  the  two  explanatory  theories, 
already  known  to  classical  antiquity  and  not  entirely 
unknown  in  the  Middle  Ages.  These  were,  first,  the 
theory  of  myth  as  allegory  of  philosophical  truths  (moral, 
political  and  so  forth),  and  secondly,  the  theory  of  myth 
as  the  history  of  actual  persons  and  events,  adorned  by 
the  fancy  which  made  heroes  into  gods  (Euhemerism). 
The  former  tendency  inspired  among  other  works  the 
Mythologiae  sive  explanationis  fabularum  libri  decem  of 
Natale  Conti  (1568)  and  Bacon's  De  sapientia  veterum 
(1609) ;  in  which,  however,  this  system  had  been  advanced 

62 


THE  SEMI-IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE     63 

with  a  certain  hesitation,  and  with  the  explicit  caution 
that,  even  if  it  were  not  valid  as  historical  interpretation, 
it  would  always  be  of  value  as  moralisation  (aut  anti- 
quitatem  illustrabimus  aut  res  ipsas  :  "  we  shall  explain 
either  antiquity  or  the  facts  themselves  ").  The  latter 
was  authoritatively  represented  by  John  Leclerc  (Clericus), 
the  learned  Dutch  Genevese  for  whom  Vico  expressed  so 
much  respect  and  gratitude  for  the  attention  he  had 
deigned  to  bestow  upon  his  Diritto  universale.  His 
edition  of  Hesiod's  Theogony  marked  an  epoch  in  the 
study  of  mythology,  and  he  was  followed  among  others 
by  Banier,  author  of  the  work  Les  Fables  expliquees  par 
I'histoire  (1735).  A  third  system,  also  not  without  some 
ancient  precedent,  derived  myths  from  particular  nations, 
the  Egyptians  or  the  Hebrews,  or  from  the  original  works 
of  individual  philosophers  and  poets.  This  view,  when 
it  neither  resolved  itself  into  a  pure  and  simple  historical 
supposition  as  to  the  origin  of  some  or  all  myths,  nor 
appealed  to  divine  revelation,  clearly  involved  the 
theory  that  myth  is  not  an  eternal  form  but  a  contingent 
product  of  the  mind,  bora  at  a  certain  time  and  capable 
of  dying  or  already  dead. 

Vico  strongly  opposed  the  first  and  third  of  these 
views  of  mythology,  namely  the  allegorical  theory  and 
that  of  historical  derivation.  On  the  allegorical  view, 
he  mentions  Bacon's  treatise,  which  had  stimulated  him 
to  the  study  of  the  subject,  but  which  he  considered 
"  more  ingenious  than  sound  "  :  on  the  other  school, 
which  regarded  myths  as  sacred  history  altered  and 
corrupted  by  the  Gentiles  and  especially  by  the  Greeks, 
he  refers  to  Vossius's  De  theologia  gentili  (1642)  and 
to  a  dissertation  by  Daniel  Huet.  Myths  or  fables  do 
not  contain  esoteric  wisdom,  that  is  to  say,  rational 
concepts,  subtly  concealed  by  the  veil  of  fable  :  hence 
they  are  not  allegorical.  Allegory  implies  on  the  one 
hand  the  concept  or  thing  signified,  on  the  other  the 


64       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

fable  or  medium  of  concealment,  and  between  the  two, 
the  art  by  which  both  are  kept  in  equilibrium.  But 
myths  cannot  be  split  up  into  these  three  moments,  nor 
even  into  a  thing  signified  and  a  thing  which  signifies  it : 
their  meaning  is  uni vocal.  The  theory  also  implies  that 
a  believer  in  the  content  does  not  believe  in  the  form  : 
but  the  makers  of  myths  believed  fully  and  ingenuously 
in  their  own  work.  Once,  for  instance,  that  first  divine 
fable  was  created,  the  myth  than  which  none  greater  was 
ever  afterwards  invented,  that  of  Jupiter,  king  and 
father  of  gods  and  men,  in  the  act  of  thundering,  the  very 
men  who  had  invented  him  believed  in  him,  and  with 
their  religion  of  terror  feared,  reverenced  and  worshipped 
him. 

Myth,  in  a  word,  is  not  fable  but  history  of  such  a 
kind  as  could  be  constructed  by  primitive  minds,  and 
strictly  considered  by  them  as  an  account  of  actual  fact. 
The  philosophers  who  arose  later  made  use  of  myths  to 
expound  their  doctrines  in  an  allegorical  manner ;  or 
deceived  themselves  into  thinking  that  they  found  them 
there  owing  to  the  feeling  of  veneration  which  attaches 
to  antiquity,  and  increases  as  our  comprehension  of  it 
diminishes  ;  or  thought  it  expedient  to  make  use  of  such 
things  for  political  purposes,  like  Plato  Homerising,  and 
at  the  same  time  Platonising  Homer :  and  in  doing  this 
they  turned  the  myths  into  fables,  which  they  were  not 
originally,  and  are  essentially  not.  Thus  we  may  say 
that  the  philosophers  and  students  of  mythology  who 
indulged  in  such  strange  fancies  about  the  legends  were 
the  real  poets,  while  the  primitive  poets  or  myth-makers 
were  the  true  students,  and  intended  to  narrate  the 
actual  facts  of  their  time.  For  the  same  reason,  namely, 
because  myth  is  an  essential  part  of  poetic  or  barbaric 
wisdom,  and,  as  such,  a  spontaneous  product  of  all  times 
and  places,  it  cannot  be  attributed  to  one  single  nation 
as  its  inventor,  from  which  it  passed  to  others ;  as  if  it 


THE  SEMI-IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE     65 

were  a  particular  discovery  of  a  particular  man  or  the 
object  of  revelation. 

This  doctrine,  superior  as  it  is  to  the  allegorical  and 
historical  theories,  is  another  aspect  of  Vico's  vindication 
of  the  non-logical  forms  of  knowledge  as  against  the 
intellectualism  which  denied  them  and  merely  represented 
them  either  as  artificial  forms  or  as  due  to  supernatural 
causes.  Nor  does  the  opinion  seem  acceptable  which 
attaches  Vico  to  the  Neo-Euhemeristic  school.  He  does 
not  indeed  explicitly  combat  this  school,  and  we  may 
even  grant  that  he  presents  certain  superficial  resem- 
blances to  it :  but  together  with  the  resemblances  there 
is  this  radical  difference,  that  for  Vico  the  stories  are  not 
alterations  of  actual  history,  but  are  essentially  history ; 
their  supposed  alteration  is  the  actual  truth  as  it  appeared 
to  the  primitive  mind. 

Vico  did  not  and  could  not  give  a  more  precise  deter- 
mination of  the  nature  of  myth,  precisely  because  owing 
to  the  fluctuating  character  of  his  concept  of  poetry 
itself  he  was  not  in  a  position  to  lay  down  the  boundary 
between  the  two  forms.  He  talks  generally  of  poetry 
and  myth  as  distinct  things,  but  he  does  not  establish 
the  distinction.  And  yet  Vico  was  familiar  enough  with 
the  concept  which  supplies  this  distinctive  criterion, 
and  had  enunciated  it :  but  instead  of  using  it  for  his 
doctrine  of  mythology,  he  had  made  of  it  one  or  more  of  his 
various  definitions  of  poetry.  That  "  poetic  character," 
that  "  imaginative  universal  "  whose  introduction  into 
aesthetic  as  the  explanatory  principle  of  poetry  causes 
so  many  insuperable  difficulties,  is  really  the  definition 
of  mythology,  and  as  such  provides  the  science  of  myth- 
ology with  the  true  principle  that  is  required.  If  the 
concept  of  accomplishing  great  labours  for  the  common 
welfare  cannot  be  disengaged  from  the  idea  of  a  particular 
man  who  accomplished  one  of  these  labours,  this  concept 
becomes  for  instance  the  myth  of  Hercules  :  and  Hercules 

F 


66      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

is  at  once  an  individual  man  who  does  individual  actions, 
and  kills  the  Lernaean  hydra  and  the  Nemean  lion  or 
cleanses  the  stables  of  Augeas,  and  also  a  concept :  just 
as  the  concept  of  beneficent  and  glorious  labour  is  at  once 
a  concept  and  Hercules  :  a  universal  and  an  imaginary 
idea  :  an  imaginative  universal. 

Again,  that  sublime  task  which  Vico  declared  proper 
to  poetry,  the  task  of  giving  life  to  inanimate  objects, 
belongs  properly  not  to  poetry  but  to  myth.  Mythology, 
embodying  its  concepts  in  images,  which  are  always 
individual  things,  at  last  animates  them  like  living  beings. 
Thus  primitive  man,  ignorant  of  the  cause  of  lightning 
and  therefore  not  possessing  the  scientific  definition  of 
it,  was  led  by  the  mythological  tendency  to  conceive  the 
sky  as  a  vast  living  being,  who,  like  man  himself  when, 
in  the  grip  of  his  fierce  passions,  he  shouted,  muttered  or 
roared,  spoke  and  meant  something  by  his  speech.  It  is 
mythology  again,  not  poetry,  whose  origin  must  be 
traced  to  "  poverty,"  to  the  weakness  of  men's  minds 
and  their  inability  to  deal  with  the  problems  they  would 
solve,  in  their  incapacity  for  thinking  in  rational  universals 
and  expressing  themselves  in  accurate  language,  whence 
arose  imaginative  universals  and  metonymy,  synecdoche 
and  metaphor  of  all  kinds.  The  contradictions  we  have 
seen  in  the  imaginative  universal  which  make  it  incapable 
of  acting  as  the  foundation  of  an  aesthetic  doctrine  are 
quite  in  keeping  in  the  doctrine  of  myth  :  for  myth 
consists  precisely  of  these  contradictions  :  it  is  a  concept 
trying  to  be  an  image  and  an  image  trying  to  be  a  concept, 
and  hence  a  kind  of  poverty,  or  even  of  powerful  impotence, 
— a  contrast,  a  mental  transition  where  white  no  longer 
exists  and  black  has  not  yet  come  into  being.  Finally, 
poetic  wisdom,  that  is,  the  theology,  science,  cosmography, 
geography,  astronomy  and  the  whole  system  of  other 
ideas  and  beliefs  of  primitive  nations  as  Vico  describes 
them,  was  really  mythology,  not,  as  he  says,  poetry,  for 


THE  SEMI-IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE     67 

the  good  reason,  given  by  himself,  that  these  things  were 
their  history  :  and  poetry  is  poetry  and  not  history,  even 
more  or  less  imaginary  history.  The  Homeric  poems 
are  poetry  in  so  far  as  they  express  the  aspirations  of 
Hellenism  :  the  same  poems,  in  so  far  as  they  were  recited 
and  heard  as  accounts  of  actual  facts,  are  history  :  the 
two  things  being  forms  of  mental  products  which,  though 
they  seem  to  be  materially  united  in  a  single  work,  are 
not  for  that  reason  to  be  identified. 

All  this  was  both  seen  and  not  seen,  or  rather,  some- 
times realised  and  sometimes  overlooked,  by  Vico  :  and 
hence  he  cannot  be  said  to  have  succeeded  in  determining 
satisfactorily  the  distinction,  and  solving  the  problem 
of  the  relation,  between  mythology  and  poetry.  Another 
problem  of  importance  relating  to  the  science  of  mythology, 
and  still  the  subject  of  controversy,  namely,  the  question 
whether  myth  belongs  to  philosophy  or  to  history,  might 
be  supposed  to  have  been  decisively  solved  by  Vico  : 
since  he  repeats  over  and  over  again  that  myths  contain 
the  historical  judgments  of  primitive  peoples,  not  the 
philosophical.  But  in  reality  when  we  examine  the 
point  closely  it  appears  that  he  neither  solved  the  problem 
nor  even  propounded  it.  The  historical  judgments  of 
which  Vico  is  speaking  are  contrasted  strictly  not  with 
philosophical  judgments  in  general  but  with  the  "  mystical 
judgments  of  the  earliest  philosophy  "  and  the  "  judg- 
ments of  analogy  "  which  the  writers  criticised  by  Vico 
found  in  mythology.  Thus  on  the  one  hand  his  words 
repeat  the  criticism  of  the  allegorical  theory  and,  on  the 
other,  controvert  that  fallacious  method  of  historical 
interpretation  which  ascribes  the  ideas  and  customs  of 
to-day  to  the  nations  of  antiquity.  The  fact  is  that  Vico's 
theory  is  just  as  much  in  agreement  with  the  theory 
connecting  myth  with  philosophy  as  with  that  which 
connects  it  with  history  ;  and  as  much  with  the  eclecticism 
which  admits  both  these  elements  as  with  the  speculative 


68       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

view  which  also  admits  them  both,  but  because  philosophy 
and  history  both  in  themselves  and  as  constituents  of 
myth  are  at  bottom  one  and  the  same. 

Considered  as  "  poverty,"  myth  must  be  superseded. 
In  the  natural  effort  of  the  human  mind  to  rejoin  God, 
the  true  One,  from  whom  it  has  come,  and  its  inability 
owing  to  the  exuberant  animal  nature  of  primitive  man 
to  make  use  of  the  faculty,  buried  as  it  is  beneath  his 
too  keen  senses,  of  abstracting  from  subjects  their  pro- 
perties and  universal  forms, — in  these  circumstances,  it 
constructs  for  itself  fanciful  unities,  imaginary  genera 
or  myths  :  but  in  its  subsequent  progress  and  develop- 
ment, it  gradually  resolves  the  imaginary  genera  into 
intelligible  genera,  poetic  universals  into  rational,  and 
sets  itself  free  from  mythology.  Thus  the  error  of  myth 
passes  into  the  truth  of  philosophy.  Vico  knew  and 
employed  a  concept  of  error,  error  properly  so  called, 
which  proceeds  from  the  will,  not  from  thought,  which 
is  never  in  error  as  regards  itself,  "  for  the  mind  is 
always  put  under  compulsion  by  truth,  since  we  can 
never  lose  sight  of  God  "  (mens  enim  semper  a  vero  urgetur 
quia  numquam  aspectu  amittere  possumus  Deum)  ;  the 
error  which  consists  in  the  arbitrary  conjunction  of  un- 
meaning words,  "  but  words  very  often,  by  the  will  of 
him  who  is  lying,  escape  the  force  of  truth  and  desert  the 
mind,  or  even  do  violence  to  the  mind  and  turn  away 
from  God  "  (verba  autem  saepissime  veri  vim  voluntate 
mentientis  eludunt  ac  mentem  deserunt,  immo  menti  vim 
aciunt  et  Deo  absistunt)  ;  the  error,  in  a  word,  which 
exists  when,  in  his  own  powerful  language,  "  though  men 
speak  with  their  mouth,  they  have  nothing  in  their  minds  ; 
since  within  their  minds  there  is  falsity,  which  is  nothing." 
But  he  also  knows  that  error  is  never  pure  error,  simply 
because  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  false  idea  and  falsity 
consists  only  in  the  wrong  combination  of  ideas,  and 
therefore  it  always  contains  truth,  and  every  fable  has 


THE  SEMI-IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE     69 

a  certain  element  of  truth.  Hence,  far  from  despising 
fables,  Vico  recognised  their  value  as  embryonic  forms 
so  to  speak  of  stored-up  knowledge  or  of  what  will  one 
day  develop  into  philosophy.  The  poets  (which  means, 
in  Vice's  new  sense  of  the  word,  myth-makers)  are  the 
senses  (that  is,  in  its  new  meaning,  rudimentary  and 
imperfect  philosophy)  :  the  philosophers  are  the  intellect 
of  mankind,  that  is  the  more  highly  developed  philosophy 
which  derives  from  the  former.  The  idea  of  God  evolves 
by  degrees  from  the  God  who  strikes  the  imagination  of 
the  isolated  man,  to  the  God  of  the  family,  divi  parentum, 
the  God  of  a  social  class  or  country,  divi  patrii,  the  God 
of  nations,  and  finally  to  the  God  "  who  is  Jupiter  to  all 
men,"  the  God  of  humanity.  The  fables  stimulated 
Plato  to  understand  the  three  divine  punishments  which 
not  men  but  only  gods  could  inflict,  oblivion,  infamy 
and  remorse :  the  passage  through  the  lower  world 
suggested  to  him  the  concept  of  the  purgatorial  journey 
by  which  the  soul  is  purified  of  passions,  and  the  arrival 
in  Elysium  suggested  the  journey  of  union  by  which  the 
mind  comes  to  unite  itself  with  God  by  the  contemplation 
of  the  eternal  divine  ideas. 

From  the  similes  and  metaphors  of  the  poets  Aesop 
drew  the  examples  and  fables  by  which  he  gave  advice  : 
and  the  instance  founded  upon  a  single  case  which  satisfies 
an  untutored  mind  developed  into  induction,  drawing 
its  validity  from  several  similar  cases,  as  taught  dialectic- 
ally  by  Socrates,  and  thence  the  syllogism  invented  by 
Aristotle,  which  cannot  exist  without  a  universal.  The 
etymologies  of  words  reveal  the  truths  observed  by 
primitive  man  and  deposited  by  him  in  his  language  : 
for  instance  the  fact,  laboriously  proved  by  modern 
philosophers,  that  the  senses  themselves  create  the  so- 
called  sensible  qualities  is  already  suggested  in  the  Latin 
word  olfacere,  which  implies  the  idea  that  the  sense 
of  smell  "  makes  "  the  odour.  Vico  attaches  such  im- 


70       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  G1AMBATTISTA    VICO 

portance  to  this  connexion  between  poetic  universals  and 
rational  universals,  between  myth  and  philosophy,  that 
he  is  led  to  assert  that  such  judgments  of  philosophers 
as  cannot  find  parallel  or  precedent  in  poetic  and  popular 
wisdom  must  be  wrong.  Here  we  have  another  meaning 
sometimes  assigned  by  him  to  the  relation  of  philosophy 
to  philology:  namely,  a  reciprocal  confirmation  of  common 
wisdom  by  esoteric  wisdom  and  vice  versa,  both  of 
which  are  united  in  the  idea  of  an  everlasting  philosophy 
of  man. 

Simultaneously  with  his  theory  of  myth  and  its 
relation  to  philosophy,  Vico  expounds  his  theory  of 
religion,  and  the  relation  it  bears  to  philosophy.  Two 
thoughts  on  this  subject  are  to  be  found  up  and  down 
the  New  Science.  The  first  is,  that  religion  arises  in  the 
phase  of  weakness  and  savagery  from  the  mind's  need 
to  allay  its  desire  to  understand  more  or  less  the 
phenomena  of  nature  and  man ;  for  instance,  to  explain 
lightning.  The  second  is,  that  religion  is  produced  in 
the  mind  by  fear  of  the  person  who  threatens  by  lightning. 
We  might  describe  these  two  views  as  theories  respectively 
of  the  theoretical  and  practical  origin  of  religion  ;  and 
since  according  to  Vice's  doctrine  man  consists  of  nothing 
but  intellect  and  will,  clearly  religion  can  have  no  other 
origin  than  these  two.  Now,  setting  aside  religion  in  its 
practical  aspect,  to  be  discussed  later,  religion  in  its 
theoretical  aspect  is  surely  nothing  else  than  the  imagina- 
tive universal,  poetic  animism,  or  myth.  To  it  belongs 
the  institution  which  Vico  calls  divination  ;  that  is,  the 
methods  of  collecting  and  interpreting  the  language  of 
Jupiter,  the  "  real  words,"  gestures  and  signs  of  God, 
formed  as  imaginative  universals  and  created  by  the 
animating  fancy.  And  as  from  myth  come  science  and 
philosophy,  so  in  like  manner  from  divination  comes  the 
knowledge  of  ground  and  cause,  philosophic  or  scientific 
prediction. 


THE  SEMI-IMAGINATIVE  FORM  OF  KNOWLEDGE     71 

In  this  way  Vico  escaped  the  prejudice  which  was 
beginning  to  prevail  in  his  time — we  may  recall  Van 
Dale's  history  of  ancient  oracles,  popularised  byFontenelle, 
and  Banier's  book  already  mentioned — and  was  to  be  so 
powerful  for  a  century,  of  considering  religions  as  "  some 
one  else's  imposture "  :  whereas,  he  says,  they  were 
really  due  to  "  one's  own  credulity."  The  man  who 
refused  to  admit  the  artificial  origin  of  myth  could  not 
admit  it  of  religion.  But  just  as  he  denied  no  less  the 
supernatural  or  revealed  origin  of  myth,  so  at  the  same 
time  he  proclaimed  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  natural, 
even  the  human,  origin  of  religions ;  and — a  fact  especially 
worthy  of  notice — placed  this  origin  in  an  inadequate 
form  of  the  mind,  namely  the  semi-imaginative  form 
identical  with  mythology.  Nor  need  we  attach  weight 
to  certain  brief  and  incidental  remarks  which  seem  to 
contradict  this  theory,  as  when  he  says  that  religion 
precedes  not  only  philosophy  but  language  itself,  which 
presupposes  the  consciousness  of  some  community  between 
man  and  man  :  such  equivocations  are  due  to  the  invari- 
able confusedness  of  his  method  and  his  habitual  lack  of 
clearness.  The  identification  of  religion  with  myth,  and 
its  human  origin,  are  ideas  not  only  emphatically  expressed, 
but  essential  to  Vice's  whole  system.  It  is  a  human 
origin  which  in  his  own  words  does  not  exclude  a  different 
concept  of  religion,  namely  as  revealed  and  hence  of 
supernatural  origin.  In  fact  he  always  separates  poetic 
theology,  which  is  mythology,  and  natural  theology, 
which  is  metaphysics  or  philosophy,  from  revealed  theology. 
But  this  last  concept  is  admitted  by  him  not  because  it 
is  connected  with  the  others  and  derived  from  a  principle 
common  to  them,  but  simply  because  Vico  asserted  its 
existence  no  less  than  theirs.  The  human  origin,  poetic 
theology,  followed  by  metaphysical  theology,  is  the  form 
valid  for  the  Gentile  portion  of  mankind,  that  is  the 
whole  human  race  except  the  Hebrew  people  with  its 


72       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

privilege  of  revelation.  The  motives  that  led  Vico  to 
maintain  this  dualism  and  the  annoying  inconsistencies 
in  which  it  compelled  him  to  rest  will  be  seen  later  on  in 
their  own  place.  But  precisely  because  Vico  left  this 
dualism  without  mediation,  we  must  in  expounding  his 
thought  hold  fast  both  terms  of  the  dualism :  and  for 
the  time  being  we  will  confine  ourselves  to  the  merely 
human  origin — religion  as  a  product  of  the  theoretical 
needs  of  man  in  a  condition  of  comparative  moral  poverty. 
This  conception  has  only  an  indirect  connexion  with 
Bruno's  view  of  religion  as  a  thing  necessary  to  the 
ignorant  and  undeveloped  mob,  and  with  Campanella's 
theory  of  natural  or  permanent  religion,  an  eternal 
rational  philosophy  coinciding  with  a  Christianity  freed 
from  its  abuses.  Its  parallels  in  contemporary  authors 
are  few  and  distant :  even  when  they  mention  it  in  passing, 
they  grasp  it  only  in  a  superficial  way  and  propound  it 
without  connecting  it  at  all  with  their  other  ideas  :  they 
attack  religion  as  a  form  of  ignorance,  and  omit  the  wisdom 
of  the  ignorance,  or  religion  as  truth. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

Vice's  other  doctrines  on  the  theoretical  reason,  that  is  to 
say  on  the  logic  of  philosophy,  of  physical  and  mathe- 
matical science  and  of  historical  study,  have  been  ex- 
pounded above  in  the  statement  of  his  theory  of  know- 
ledge, and  are  drawn  almost  entirely  from  his  early  works, 
since  in  the  New  Science  the  phase  of  the  "  completely 
developed  mind  "  hardly  appears  except  as  a  limit  of  the 
field  of  study.  Here  it  will  suffice  to  mention  that  he  also 
touches  upon  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  poetry  to 
history  :  but,  still  because  of  the  confusion  of  philosophy 
with  social  science,  he  fails  fully  to  solve  it.  From  one 
point  of  view  it  seems  to  Vico  that  history  is  prior  to 
poetry,  because  the  latter,  as  he  says,  presupposes  reality 
and  contains  an  "  imitation  of  the  second  degree  "  :  from 
another,  poetry  is  the  primary  form,  because  among 
primitive  peoples  history  is  poetry,  and  the  first  historians 
are  poets.  At  any  rate  he  insists  upon  the  poetic  element 
essential  to  history  :  of  Herodotus,  the  father  of  Greek 
history,  he  observes  that  not  only  are  "  his  books  full, 
for  the  most  part,  of  fables,"  but  "  the  style  retains  a  very 
great  Homeric  element,  a  feature  which  all  subsequent 
historians  retained,  using  as  they  did  a  phraseology 
intermediate  between  the  poetic  and  the  colloquial "  : 
"  almost  the  words  of  the  poets,"  verba  ferme  poetarum, 
as  he  says  elsewhere  in  a  phrase  borrowed  from  Cicero. 

73 


74      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATT1STA    VICO 

Nor  are  the  relations  between  theory  and  practice, 
intellect  and  will,  explained  in  detail  by  Vico,  although 
on  the  whole  he  suggests  the  general  idea  that  as  in  God 
intellect  and  will  coincide,  so  it  is  in  man,  God's  image ; 
whose  mind  is  not  divided  into  thought  and  will — thought 
proceeding  according  to  one  method  and  will  according 
to  another — but  his  thought  and  will  interpenetrate  and 
form  one  single  whole  :  a  view  far  superior  to  that  of  the 
contemporary  philosophy  of  Leibniz,  which  retained  the 
idea  of  a  divine  arbitrament  and  therefore  of  irrationality. 
Another  view,  peculiar  to  Vico,  might  be  taken  by  a  hasty 
interpreter  to  imply  the  priority  of  practice  to  theory. 
He  says  that  philosophers  arrive  at  their  conceptions 
thanks  to  experience  of  social  institutions  and  laws  in 
which  men  agree  as  a  kind  of  universals  :  that  Socrates 
and  Plato,  for  instance,  presupposed  the  Athenian  de- 
mocracy and  law-courts.  But  the  succession  of  religions 
producing  republics,  republics  producing  laws,  and  laws 
producing  philosophical  ideas,  which  he  calls  "  a  fragment 
of  the  history  of  philosophy  philosophically  narrated," 
is  really  a  theory  of  sociological,  not  of  philosophical 
value. 

As  regards  his  doctrines  of  practical  reason,  which  we 
are  here  beginning  to  consider,  it  might  be  thought  that 
Vico,  unlike  his  attitude  with  regard  to  the  theoretical 
reason,  did  not  stand  in  sharp  opposition  to  the  thought 
of  his  time,  but  actually  united  himself  with  a  contem- 
porary movement,  namely  the  school  of  natural  rights. 
The  head  of  the  school  and  leader  of  the  movement,  Hugo 
Grotius,  was  called  by  Vico  one  of  his  "  four  authors," 
together  with  Plato,  from  whom  he  had  drawn  his  aspira- 
tions towards  an  idealistic  philosophy,  Bacon,  who  had 
aroused  in  his  mind  the  idea  of  a  positive  and  historical 
science  of  society,  and  Tacitus,  his  debt  to  whom,  or  at 
least  the  debt  which  he  believed  he  owed  him,  we  shall 
examine  later  on.  Along  with  Grotius  he  frequently 


THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  75 

mentions  the  other  chief  authorities  on  natural  rights, 
Selden  and  Puffendorf,  omitting  their  innumerable 
followers,  whom  he  considers  less  as  scientific  authorities 
than  as  "  adorners  "of  the  Grotian  system. 

His  adherence  to  the  school,  in  a  certain  sense,  is 
clear,  and  is  admitted  and  proclaimed  by  Vico  himself. 
But  it  is  also  beyond  doubt  that  he  was  no  mere  adherent : 
he  was  not  a  follower  of  the  kind  that  retains  the  general 
or  leading  ideas  while  developing  and  correcting  details. 
He  was  a  follower  in  the  dialectical  sense  only,  that  is, 
in  so  far  as  he  thought  it  necessary  to  contest  the  primary 
theses,  or  to  accept  them  only  in  a  profoundly  modified 
form .  Natural  right  offered  him  not  solutions  but  problems : 
and  of  these,  while  some  came  before  him  already  clearly 
formulated,  others,  and  these  were  the  more  important, 
arose  only  in  his  own  mind :  problems  either  unsolved  or 
unrealised,  till  Vico  propounded  and  in  part  solved  them. 

Natural  rights  presented  many  aspects  and  many 
tendencies  :  and  it  would  be  well  to  begin  by  distinguish- 
ing and  enumerating  these.  In  the  first  place,  the  school 
taken  as  a  whole  and  in  its  essential  character  expressed 
the  social  progress  by  which  Europe,  on  emerging  from 
feudalism  and  religious  warfare,  acquired  a  new  con- 
sciousness, distinctively  bourgeois  and  non-clerical  in 
character ;  and  it  observed  that  the  growth  of  this  con- 
sciousness was  contemporaneous  with  the  anti- clerical 
and  bourgeois  institution  of  "  masonry."  The  word 
"natural"  meant, among  other  things,  "not  supernatural" : 
and  hence  implied  hostility  or  indifference  towards  the 
supernatural,  the  institutions  representing  it,  and  the 
social  conflicts  resulting  from  it.  It  was  not  by  accident 
that  Grotius  was  an  Arminian ;  that  Puffendorf  went  to 
law  with  theologians  ;  that  Thomasius  is  remembered 
as  one  of  the  champions  of  freedom  of  conscience.  The 
protestations  of  respect  for  religion  and  the  church, 
habitually  and  liberally  inserted  by  these  publicists  in 


76       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

their  works, — which  are  draped,  so  to  speak,  with  a  veil 
of  piety, — were  merely  politic  safeguards,  enabling  the 
author  to  threaten  the  enemy  unobserved  and  to  strike 
from  under  cover.  This  caution  is  praised,  in  Grotius's 
case  for  example,  by  a  follower  of  the  school  (the  author 
of  Pauco  plenior  iuris  naturalis  historia,  1719),  who  extols 
the  master  as  "the  instrument  of  divine  providence," 
coming  like  Messiah  to  redeem  the  "  natural  light " 
from  its  bondage  to  the  "  supernatural,"  and  as  such 
gifted  with  all  the  power  and  ability  he  could  need  : 
so  that  after  tasting  the  persecutions  of  Scholasticism, 
"  he  behaved  with  caution,  to  avoid  further  irritating 
the  jealousy  against  his  natural  and  reasonable  prudence 
that  had  issued  forth  from  its  lair  at  his  threats  "  (caute 
versabatur  .  .  .  ne  mains  bilem  adversus  prudentiam 
naturalem  et  rationalem  ex  latebris  firoductam  tarn  minis 
irritaret),  and  in  proceeding  to  separate  human  from 
divine  laws,  did  not  execute  a  frontal  assault  on  the 
theological  school  when  he  attacked  its  fundamental  errors, 
but  even  praised  it  in  the  preface  to  his  work.  The  word 
"  natural "  also  denoted  what  is  common  to  individuals 
of  different  nations  and  ranks  :  and  hence  from  a  practical 
point  of  view  provided  an  admirable  war-cry  for  uniting 
the  bourgeoisie  of  different  countries  in  definite  common 
aspirations  and  struggles.  The  treatises  of  natural  rights 
were  for  the  bourgeoisie  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  what  the  "  Manifesto  of  the  communists  "  and 
the  cry  "  Proletariates  of  the  world,  unite  "  attempted 
to  be  for  the  working  classes  of  the  nineteenth. 

In  so  far  as  this  school  and  this  publicism  were  signs 
of  a  practical  movement,  the  philosophical  interest  held 
in  them  a  secondary  place  and  discharged  a  function 
of  minor  importance :  so  that,  secondly,  the  works  on 
natural  right,  philosophically  considered,  did  not  as 
a  rule  rise  above  a  simple  popular  empiricism.  The 
principles  on  which  they  rest  are  not  examined  and  often 


THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  77 

not  even  superficially  reconciled :  the  concepts  which 
they  use  are  less  concepts  than  general  representations  : 
and  the  form  of  the  writing  is  systematic  in  appearance 
only.  Some  of  these  writers  endeavoured  to  harmonise 
their  doctrines  of  natural  right  with  the  Platonic,  Stoic 
or  Cartesian  philosophies,  or  appealed  to  logical  or  meta- 
physical axioms,  or  made  use  of  deduction  and  the  mathe- 
matical method.  But  all  this  was  mere  aggregation, 
not  fusion ;  ornament,  not  reinforcement :  at  most,  it 
was  of  value  as  a  proof  of  diligence  and  earnest  intentions. 

The  philosophy,  however,  which  was  more  or  less 
implicit  in  the  pamphleteers  of  natural  rights,  and  explicit 
in  the  philosophers  who  set  out  to  elaborate  the  doctrine, 
agreed  with  the  spirit  of  the  time,  whose  general  character- 
istics are  well  known.  Thus  arose  the  third  or  ethical  aspect 
of  natural  right,  namely  its  utilitarianism ;  sometimes 
more  or  less  concealed,  sometimes  openly  declared,  and 
worked  out  from  time  to  time  by  a  philosophy  of  mathe- 
matical or  sensationalistic  methods,  and  of  materialistic 
or  rationalistic  tendencies  :  or  else,  what  comes  practically 
to  the  same  thing,  an  abstract  and  intellectualistic 
morality,  threatening  at  any  moment  to  fall  into  utili- 
tarianism. From  this  intellectualism  and  utilitarianism, 
combined  with  the  practical  and  revolutionary  character 
of  this  mental  movement, — which  was  bent  rather  upon 
bringing  about  the  triumph  of  an  abstract  system  of  right 
than  upon  recognising  that  which  really  develops  in 
history,  in  all  the  complexity  of  its  many  forms  and 
vicissitudes — derived  its  fourth  characteristic,  the  lack  of 
historical  sense,  or  the  anti-historical  attitude  of  the  school, 
which  set  up  the  abstract  ideal  of  a  human  nature  apart 
from  human  history  instead  of  fused  with  and  living 
in  it. 

Finally,  bourgeois,  anticlerical,  utilitarian  and  material- 
istic as  it  was,  the  movement  of  natural  right  had  a  fifth 
important  trait,  namely  its  aversion  to  transcendence 


78      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

and  its  tendency  towards  an  immanental  conception  of 
man  and  of  society.  This  characteristic  is  neither  fully 
explained  nor  fully  worked  out  in  the  doctrines,  but  is 
none  the  less  easily  recognised  among  the  total  views  of 
the  school. 

Now  Vico's  genius  was  truly  and  indeed  exclusively 
theoretical,  and  not  at  all  practical  or  reformatory :  his 
method  was  profoundly  speculative  and  contemptuous 
of  empiricism,  his  mind  idealistic  and  opposed  to  material- 
ism and  utilitarianism  :  his  theory  of  knowledge  eager 
for  the  concrete,  for  "  certitude,"  and,  as  such,  of  historical 
sympathies.  Consequently  his  doctrine  of  the  practical 
reason,  though  deriving  its  impetus  from  the  theory  of 
natural  rights,  was  bound  to  emerge  in  a  shape  different 
from  or  even  contrary  to  that  theory  in  all  the  first  four 
characteristics  enumerated  above.  And  if  it  did  in  one 
respect  coincide — which  it  only  does  in  the  conclusion, 
not  in  the  path  by  which  the  conclusion  is  reached — it 
did  so  in  the  very  point  in  which  Vico  would  least  have 
wished  it :  in  its  immanental  or  anti-religious  tendency. 

But  since  our  subject  is  not  the  criticisms  and  modi- 
fications which  the  theory  of  natural  right  received  from 
Vico's  thought,  but  rather  that  thought  itself,  it  is  time 
to  pick  up  the  thread  of  the  exposition,  following  an  order 
somewhat  different  from  that  in  which  we  have  summed 
up  the  various  characteristics  of  the  theory,  and  beginning 
by  observing  Vico's  opposition  to  the  professed  or  implicit 
utilitarianism  of  the  school,  and  the  ethical  doctrine  by 
which  he  replaced  it. 

The  two  chief  representatives  of  utilitarianism  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  whom  Vico  always  keeps  in  view, 
are  Hobbes  and  Spinoza :  but  in  addition  to  them,  he 
refers  to  Locke  and  Bayle  and,  in  the  preceding  century, 
Machiavelli ;  and  going  back  to  the  ancients,  the  Stoics 
with  their  conception  of  faith  and  the  Epicureans  with  that 
of  chance,  Carneades  and  his  scepticism,  and  finally  the 


THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  79 

unconscious  theory  contained  in  the  saying  "  Vae  victis" 
attributed  to  Brennus,  chief  of  the  Gauls  who  took  Rome. 
He  admired  Hobbes's  splendid  attempt  to  enrich  philo- 
sophy by  a  theory  which  had  been  lacking  to  the  greatest 
days  of  Greece,  the  theory  of  man  considered  in  the 
whole  society  of  the  human  race  :  but  he  pronounced  the 
result  unsatisfactory,  and  the  attempt,  whose  outcome, 
like  that  of  Locke's  system,  was  hardly  distinguishable 
from  Epicureanism,  a  failure.  Hobbes  did  not  observe 
that  he  could  never  have  propounded  his  problem  of  the 
natural  rights  of  mankind  had  not  his  motive  been  supplied 
by  the  Christian  religion  itself,  which  commands  not 
indeed  justice  but  charity  to  all  mankind.  With  the  Stoics 
on  the  other  hand,  with  the  fatalism  and  determinism 
which  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  reason  soundly  about 
the  state  and  laws,  with  the  so-called  "  Spinozists  of 
antiquity,"  he  ideally  united  Spinoza  ;  the  uniqueness  of 
whose  utilitarianism,  equally  removed  from  the  Lockian 
spirit  and  the  Hobbist,  since  Spinoza  "  judges  of  the  truth 
of  things  by  the  mind,  not  by  sense  "  (mente  non  sensu  de 
veris  rerum  diiudicat],  did  not  escape  Vico's  notice.  But 
unique  though  it  was,  it  led  Spinoza  to  think  of  the  state 
in  a  somewhat  undignified  way  "  as  of  a  mere  society  of 
shopkeepers."  These  utilitarian  doctrines,  with  their 
libels  upon  human  nature,  seemed  to  Vico  only  fit  for  men 
without  hope,  too  insignificant  ever  to  have  a  share  in 
the  state  or  proud  enough  to  believe  themselves  repressed 
and  denied  access  to  the  positions  of  which  in  their  arro- 
gance they  thought  themselves  worthy.  Among  these  he 
counted  the  unfortunate  Spinoza,  who,  he  thinks,  having 
as  a  Jew  no  country  of  his  own,  was  moved  by  envy  to 
devote  himself  to  the  construction  of  a  metaphysic 
"  intended  to  overthrow  all  the  nations  of  the  world." 
He  passes  stern  judgment  upon  the  state  of  contemporary 
ethics,  which  was  all  that  it  could  be  on  the  basis  of  a 
mechanistic  and  materialistic  metaphysic  without  a  gleam 


So  ,     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    V1CO 

of  finalism.  Descartes  produced  nothing  at  all  in  this 
field,  since  his  few  written  remains  on  the  subject  do  not 
amount  to  a  doctrine,  and  his  treatise  of  the  Passions 
belongs  rather  to  medicine  than  to  morals.  Malebranche 
and  Nicole  were  equally  sterile,  and  Pascal's  Pensees,  the 
one  exception,  are  "  but  scattered  lights."  Of  the  Italians, 
Pallavicino's  treatise  Del  bene  offers  no  very  profound 
depths  of  ethics :  and  Muratori's  attempt  in  his  Filosofia 
Morale  was  a  very  unsuccessful  one. 

Utility  is  not  the  explanatory  principle  of  morality, 
because  it  proceeds  from  man's  bodily  nature,  and  on 
that  account  is  subject  to  change,  while  morality,  honestas, 
is  eternal.  To  derive  morality  from  utility  is  to  confound 
the  occasion  with  the  cause,  to  confine  oneself  to  the 
surface  and  to  offer  no  explanation  at  all  of  the  facts. 
None  of  the  various  modes  in  which  philosophers  have 
successively  called  the  utilitarian  principle  to  life,  fraud 
or  imposture,  force,  desire, — none  of  these  accounts  for 
differentiation,  that  is,  for  the  social  organism.  What 
fraud  could  ever  have  seduced  and  deceived  the  supposed 
simple  and  frugal  first  owners  of  the  land,  living  as  they 
did  perfectly  contented  with  their  lot  ?  What  force 
could  have  succeeded,  if  the  rich,  the  alleged  usurpers, 
were  few,  and  the  poor,  the  robbed,  were  many  ?  Such 
explanations  are  ridiculous,  and  unworthy  of  a  serious 
problem.  These  strong  and  powerful  men  were  really 
powerful  with  something  other  than  mere  strength  :  thus 
they  became  protectors  of  the  weak  and  enemies  of  de- 
structive and  anti-social  tendencies  :  their  rule  was  one 
of  force,  it  is  true,  but  "  imposed  by  a  more  powerful 
character"  (a  natura  praestantiori  dictata)  ;  a  fact  which 
the  barbarian  Brennus  may  be  pardoned  for  not  knowing, 
but  not  so  a  philosopher.  The  force  which  created  and 
organised  the  earliest  states  was  nothing  but  "  noble  human 
nature,"  to  which  states  must  always  hark  back,  although 
£hey  may  have  been  won  by  fraud  and  force,  in  order  to 


THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  81 

subsist  and  maintain  themselves :  which  agrees  with 
Machiavelli's  advice  to  hark  back  to  the  beginnings, 
but  with  the  implication  that  the  deepest  beginnings  are 
to  be  found  in  mercy  and  justice.  Men  are  held  together 
by  something  stouter  than  utility.  Human  society  cannot 
originate  and  endure  without  mutual  trust ;  unless  people 
accept  each  other's  promises  and  take  each  other's  word  for 
facts  they  cannot  examine.  Could  this  trust  be  perhaps 
ensured  by  strict  penal  laws  against  falsehood  ?  But 
laws  are  a  product  of  society,  and  this  mutual  trust  is 
necessary  that  society  may  arise.  It  may  be  said,  as  it 
is  by  Locke,  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  psychological 
process,  by  which  men  gradually  acquired  the  habit  of 
believing  when  some  one  spoke  to  them  and  promised  to 
tell  the  truth.  But  in  that  case  these  men  already  under- 
stood the  idea  of  a  truth  which  by  mere  disclosure  com- 
pelled assent  without  any  personal  teaching  ;  and  the 
psychological  principle  of  habituation  is  transcended. 

The  true  cause  of  human  society  then  is  not  utility, 
which  only  assists  the  action  of  the  cause  as  its  occasion, 
and  brings  it  about  that  men,  with  all  the  weakness 
and  poverty  of  their  nature,  and  the  divisions  among 
them  due  to  original  sin,  are  led  to  extol  their  social 
nature  "  under  compulsion  of  facts  "  (rebus  ipsis  dictan- 
tibus),  in  the  phrase  of  the  jurist  Pomponius,  quoted  with 
approval  by  Vico.  Objects,  facts  and  circumstances  in 
morality  change,  though  morality  itself  does  not  change : 
and  hence  arises  the  illusion  of  the  utilitarians,  who  cling 
to  the  external,  confine  themselves  to  the  appearance  and 
see  the  change  but  not  the  permanence.  Murder  is  for- 
bidden :  but  the  approval,  bestowed  upon  the  man  who 
when  his  life  is  threatened  and  he  cannot  otherwise  save 
himself  kills  his  unjust  aggressor,  does  not  imply  that  the 
moral  judgment  upon  homicide  varies  ;  since  in  these 
particular  circumstances  the  case  is  really  one  not  of 
homicide  but  of  capital  punishment  inflicted  by  the 


82       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

unjustly  attacked  person  finding  himself  alone :  a  power 
tacitly  delegated  to  him  so  to  speak  by  society.  Theft  is 
forbidden  :  but  the  man  who  in  order  to  preserve  his  life 
steals  a  loaf  from  another  does  not  violate  morality  because 
he  is  exercising  a  right  founded  upon  equity. 

The  only  philosophy  which  carries  with  it  a  true  ethic 
seems  to  Vico  to  be  the  Platonic,  resting  as  it  does  upon 
a  metaphysical  principle,  the  eternal  idea  which  draws 
out  of  itself  and  creates  matter :  while  the  Aristotelian 
ethic  is  founded  upon  a  metaphysic  leading  to  a  physical 
principle,  that  of  the  matter  from  which  particular  forms 
are  drawn,  a  principle  which  makes  God  a  potter  shaping 
objects  external  to  himself.  The  ethic  of  the  Roman 
lawyers  was  doubtless  rich  in  fine  aphorisms  :  but  it  was 
nothing  but  a  mere  art  of  equity,  conveyed  by  means  of 
endless  minute  maxims  of  natural  justice,  sought  for  by 
the  writers  in  the  reason  of  the  laws  and  the  will  of  the 
lawgiver.  Hence  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  moral 
philosophy,  in  which  the  best  method  is  to  proceed  from  a 
very  small  number  of  eternal  truths,  established  by  ideal 
justice  in  the  fabric  of  metaphysic.  For  analogous 
reasons  Vico  could  not  rest  satisfied  with  Grotius  and  the 
school  of  natural  rights :  of  which  in  general  he  makes 
the  perfectly  just  remark  that  their  ponderous  tomes,  in 
spite  of  the  impressive  titles  they  bear,  contain  nothing 
that  is  not  universally  known.  If  Grotius's  principles  be 
weighed  in  the  accurate  balance  of  criticism,  they  are  all 
found  to  be  probable  or  plausible  rather  than  necessary 
and  incontestable.  In  dealing  with  the  question  of  utility, 
Grotius  missed  the  exact  point  by  failing  to  distinguish 
the  occasion  from  the  cause  :  nor  did  he  "  nail  down  " — 
that  is,  he  did  not  end — the  ancient  dispute  as  to  whether 
right  is  a  question  of  nature  or  of  human  opinion  only, 
the  same  controversy  as  that  carried  on  by  philosophers 
and  theologians  with  Carneades  the  sceptic  and  Epicurus  : 
he  advances  the  hypothesis  of  primitive  men  who  were 


THE  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  83 

"  simpletons,"  but  quite  omits  to  give  reasons  for  it. 
And  since  these  "  simpletons "  of  his,  after  suffering 
injuries  from  their  beast-like  isolation,  initiated  a  sociable 
life,  a  step  to  which  they  were  determined  by  utility, 
Grotius  himself  slipped  unawares  into  utilitarianism  and 
Epicureanism. 

Vico  on  the  other  hand  answered  the  question,  whether 
right  is  natural  or  conventional,  by  the  grave  aphorism 
"  except  in  their  natural  condition,  things  neither  progress 
nor  endure."  To  the  question,  whence  society  arises, 
he  replies  by  mentioning  the  common  feeling  of  humanity, 
the  conscience,  the  need  which  man  feels  of  escaping 
from  the  internal  enemy,  which  tortures  his  heart.  The 
origin  of  society  certainly  lies  in  fear,  but  it  is  fear  of 
oneself,  not  of  another's  violence :  it  lies  in  the  agonies 
of  remorse,  the  shame  whose  tinge  suffusing  the  cheeks  of 
the  earliest  men  lit  the  first  beacon  of  morality  upon  earth. 
Shame  is  the  mother  of  all  virtues,  honour,  frugality, 
honesty,  loyalty  to  the  pledged  word,  truthfulness  in 
speech,  abstention  from  others'  property,  and  chastity. 
In  extolling  society,  man  is  extolling  human  nature. 

Shame  or  the  moral  consciousness,  translated  into 
terms  of  the  corresponding  empirical  science,  becomes 
that  common  consciousness  of  man  upon  matters  of  human 
necessity  or  utility  which  is  the  source  of  the  natural 
right  of  nations.  This  common  consciousness,  says  Vico, 
is  an  unreflective  judgment,  felt  in  common  by  a  whole 
class,  a  whole  people,  a  whole  nation  and  the  whole  of 
mankind.  An  unreflective  judgment  is  not  strictly  a 
judgment  at  all,  since  reflection  is  inseparable  from  judg- 
ment :  it  is  not  judgment,  because  it  is  felt  and  not 
thought.  But  on  the  other  hand  it  is  not  what  is  called 
a  "  feeling," — a  vague  term  unknown  to  Vico,  as  it  is  to 
traditional  philosophy.  It  is  rather  a  practical  attitude 
of  mind,  similar  on  the  whole  in  persons  living  in  similar 
conditions  and  producing  similar  customs  in  the  various 


84       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

social  groups,  from  the  customs  of  a  particular  class  to 
those  of  all  mankind,  The  attitude  is  quite  spontaneous, 
and  for  this  very  reason  unreflective  ;  so  that  customs  arise 
from  within,  not  from  without,  and  their  similarity  does 
not  depend  upon  imitation  ("  without  one  nation  taking 
example  from  another  ").  Through  this  sensus  communis 
the  moral  consciousness  embodies  itself  in  compact  and 
unyielding  institutions :  and  thus  the  sensus  communis 
reduces  to  certitude  the  free  will  of  man,  which  is  in  itself 
quite  uncertain. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MORALITY  AND   RELIGION 

BUT  this  internal  fear,  shame  or  moral  consciousness  is 
aroused  in  man  by  religion.  The  fear  is  the  fear  of  God, 
the  shame  is  abasement  before  his  face.  Primitive  man 
wanders  over  the  earth  alone,  wild,  fierce,  without  articulate 
speech,  without  a  permanent  mate,  at  the  mercy  of  his 
unbridled  and  violent  passions,  a  "  brute  "  rather  than 
a  man.  What  can  restrain  him  ?  what  can  rescue  him 
from  at  last  destroying  himself  ?  Wise  men  cannot 
direct  him,  for  we  cannot  say  whence  or  how  they 
can  reach  him.  The  intervention  of  God  cannot 
save  him :  God  has  withdrawn  himself  to  his  chosen 
people,  and  has  no  dealings  with  the  rest  of  mankind, 
the  Gentiles.  But  this  "  brute  "  is  still  a  man  :  God, 
while  abandoning  him,  has  left  a  spark  of  his  own  essence 
at  the  bottom  of  his  heart.  See  !  the  sky  lightens  :  the 
wild  creature  stands  awestruck  and  afraid  :  in  his  mind 
arises  the  shadowy  idea  of  something  greater  than  he, 
something  divine.  So  he  conceives  or  rather  imagines 
a  first  God,  a  Sky-god,  a  thundering  Jupiter :  and  to  this 
deity  he  turns  to  appease  his  wrath  or  invoke  his  aid. 
But  in  order  to  conciliate  him  and  secure  his  help,  he  must 
shape  his  own  life  conformably  to  his  purpose  :  he  must 
humble  himself  before  his  God,  overcome  his  own  pride 
and  arrogance,  abstain  from  certain  actions  and  perform 
others.  Thus  the  conception  of  a  deity  lends  power  to 

85 


86       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA  VICO 

that  peculiar  possession  of  the  human  will,  the  attempt, 
that  is,  the  liberty,  to  control  the  movements  communi- 
cated to  the  mind  by  the  body  and  to  annul  or  to  redirect 
them  simultaneously.  With  these  acts  of  self-control, 
with  freedom,  morality  comes  into  existence  :  the  fear 
of  God  has  laid  the  foundations  of  human  life.  Altars 
arise  all  over  the  earth :  the  caves  of  her  mountains, 
whither  the  man  now  bears  the  woman,  ashamed  as  he 
is  of  gratifying  his  desires  before  the  face  of  the  sky, 
which  is  the  face  of  God,  preside  at  the  first  marriage- 
rites  and  shelter  the  first  families  :  her  bosom  opens 
to  receive  the  sacred  trust  of  the  bodies  of  the  dead. 
The  first  and  fundamental  ethical  institutions — worship, 
wedlock  and  burial — have  arisen. 

This  social  and  ethical  power  of  the  idea  of  God  appears 
again  in  the  course  of  subsequent  history:  since  when 
nations  have  relapsed  into  savagery  through  warfare, 
and  human  laws  have  no  more  power  over  them,  religion 
is  the  only  means  of  subduing  them.  It  reappears  again 
in  the  individual  development  of  human  life  :  children 
indeed  cannot  learn  piety  except  through  the  fear  of 
some  deity ;  and  when  all  natural  help  fails  him  man 
requires  a  superior  being  to  save  him,  and  this  being  is 
God.  All  nations  believe  in  a  divine  providence  :  tribes 
living  in  a  society  without  any  consciousness  of  God,  for 
instance  in  some  parts  of  Brazil,  among  the  Kafirs,  and  in 
the  Antilles,  are  travellers'  tales,  an  attempt  to  increase 
the  sale  of  their  books  by  the  narration  of  portents. 

If  this  is  so, — and  doubtless  it  is — then  no  doctrine 
can  be  more  foolish  than  that  which  claims  to  conceive 
a  morality  and  civilisation  without  religion.  Just  as  no 
well-established  physical  science  is  possible  without  the 
guidance  of  abstract  mathematical  truth,  so  no  knowledge 
of  morality  can  arise  except  together  with  abstract  meta- 
physical truths,  without,  that  is,  the  idea  of  God.  When 
the  religious  consciousness  is  extinguished  or  obscured 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  87 

the  conception  of  society  and  the  state  is  extinguished  or 
obscured  with  it.  Jews,  Christians,  Gentiles  and  Mahom- 
medans  possess  this  conception  because  all  alike  believe 
in  some  deity,  whether  as  an  infinite  free  spirit,  or  as 
several  gods  consisting  of  mind  and  body,  or  as  one  single 
God,  an  infinite  free  spirit  in  an  infinite  body.  The 
Epicureans  did  not  possess  such  a  conception,  attributing 
to  God  as  they  did  body  alone,  and  chance  together  with 
body  :  nor  did  the  Stoics,  who  made  him  subject  to  fate. 
And  Cicero  made  the  admirable  remark  to  the  Epicurean 
Atticus,  that  he  could  not  discuss  laws  with  him  unless  he 
first  granted  the  existence  of  the  divine  providence. 
Hobbes,  who  revived  Epicureanism,  and  Spinoza,  who 
revived  Stoicism,  as  we  have  seen  entirely  failed  to  under- 
stand the  nature  of  society  and  the  state.  One  must 
consort  with  primitive  man,  stupid,  hirsute,  unclean  and 
dishevelled,  to  refute  those  learned  authors  of  "  desiccated 
literature,"  with  Peter  Bayle  at  their  head,  who  maintain 
that  human  society  can  and  indeed  does  live  without 
religion. 

The  absence  of  the  idea  of  God  supplied  the  chief 
argument  in  Vico's  criticism  of  Grotius  and  Puffendorf, 
two  of  these  authors  whom  he  held  in  great  honour  as 
"  princes  "  of  the  school  of  natural  rights.  Neither  of  these 
writers,  he  says,  lays  down  the  principle  of  divine  provi- 
dence as  primary  and  essential.  Grotius  does  not  ex- 
pressly deny  it :  but  on  account  of  his  very  attachment 
to  truth,  he  endeavours  to  exclude  it,  and  asserts  that  his 
system  will  stand  even  if  all  knowledge  of  God  be  removed. 
Hence  Vico  accuses  him  of  Socinianism,  since  he  makes 
human  innocence  consist  in  the  simplicity  of  human 
nature.  Puffendorf  is  still  worse  :  he  seems  to  ignore 
providential  direction,  and  begins  with  the  scandalously 
Epicurean  supposition  that  man  is  thrown  into  this  world 
with  no  help  or  attention  from  God,  without  even  that 
spark  within  his  heart  which  is  destined  to  grow  into  the 


88       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

flame  of  morality  :  and  having  been  reproved  for  this,  he 
tries  to  justify  himself  in  a  special  essay,  but  does  not 
succeed  in  discovering  the  true  principle  on  which  alone 
society  can  be  explained. 

Now  why,  in  face  of  all  these  energetic  declarations  and 
arguments  of  Vico's  on  the  necessity  of  religion  to  morality, 
did  we  say  above  that  the  only  point  of  real  resemblance 
between  him  and  Grotius,  Puffendorf  and  the  natural- 
right  school  generally  was  his  purely  immanental  concep- 
tion of  ethics  ?  Because,  if  we  examine  the  point  closely, 
Vico  is  not  in  opposition  to  the  method  of  that  school. 
Like  them,  in  constructing  his  science  of  human  society  he 
excludes  with  Grotius  all  idea  of  God,  and  with  Puff  endorf 
considers  man  as  without  help  or  attention  from  God, 
excluding  him,  that  is,  from  revealed  religion  and  its  God. 
As  for  these  two  writers,  so  for  Vico  the  subject  under 
consideration  is  natural  rights,  not  supernatural :  the  law 
of  the  Gentiles,  not  of  the  chosen  people  :  the  law  which 
arises  of  itself  among  the  caves,  not  that  which  comes 
down  from  Sinai.  Vico's  opposition,  which  he  expresses 
with  his  accustomed  confusion  and  obscurity,  turns  not 
upon  assertions  like  these,  but  upon  the  actual  conception 
of  religion.  In  one  word,  the  religion  of  which  he  speaks 
is  not  the  same  as  that  of  which  Grotius  and  Puffendorf 
spoke,  or  rather  did  not  speak. 

Religion,  as  we  have  already  seen,  means  for  Vico  not 
necessarily  revelation,  but  conception  of  reality  :  either 
that  which  expresses  itself  as  it  does  in  the  period  of  fully 
developed  mind  in  the  form  of  intelligible  metaphysic, 
which  passes  from  the  thought  of  God  to  explain  logic  by 
its  reasoning  and  to  condescend  to  purify  the  human  heart 
by  morality  :  or  that  which  takes  concrete  shape,  as  it 
does  in  the  earliest  stage  of  humanity,  in  the  form  of 
poetical  metaphysics.  One  may  easily  ignore  revealed 
religion  when  inquiring  into  the  foundations  of  morality  : 
but  how  can  one  ever  ignore  this  natural  religion, 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  89 

identical  as  it  is  with  knowledge  of  the  truth  ?  Plutarch, 
discussing  the  primitive  religions  of  terror,  asks  the 
question  whether  it  would  not  have  been  better,  instead  of 
worshipping  the  gods  in  so  impious  a  manner,  that  there 
should  be  no  religion  at  all :  but  he  forgot  that  from 
these  cruel  superstitions  brilliant  civilisations  developed, 
and  no  civilisation  could  ever  have  grown  from  atheism. 
Without  a  religion,  whether  gentle  or  fierce,  rational  or 
fantastic,  to  give  the  idea,  more  or  less  clearly  denned, 
more  or  less  elevated,  of  something  superior  to  the  indi- 
vidual and  uniting  all  individuals,  the  moral  will  would 
have  no  object  for  its  volition. 

At  this  point  we  see  the  meaning  of  what  we  have 
described  as  the  second,  practical  or  ethical,  signification 
of  the  word  "  religion  "  in  Vico.  In  this  signification, 
Vico  justifies  and  vindicates  the  impious  saying  that 
"  fear  creates  the  gods  "  :  he  even  places  the  source  of 
religion  in  the  longing  for  eternal  life  which  man  feels 
when  stirred  by  a  universal  sense  of  immortality  hidden 
in  the  depths  of  the  mind.  In  this  second  signification, 
religion  is  a  practical  fact,  indeed  it  is  morality  itself,  as 
in  the  first  meaning  it  was  truth  itself. 

If  the  meaning  of  religion  for  Vico,  either  as  the  con- 
dition of  morality,  in  the  first  sense  of  the  word,  or  as 
synonymous  with  it,  in  the  second,  is  once  understood,  it 
is  clear  that  when  he  condemned  Grotius  and  Puffendorf 
for  their  omission  of  this  most  important  concept,  he  was 
substantially  doing  nothing  but  clenching  his  criticism 
of  the  insipid  moralising  and  the  concealed  utilitarianism 
of  these  two  thinkers.  On  other  occasions  also  he  resorted 
to  the  valuable  weapon  of  the  concept  of  religion,  with 
the  same  end  in  view.  Because  if  he  sometimes  credited 
philosophy  with  the  task  of  assisting  mankind  by  raising 
and  directing  fallen  human  nature,  at  other  times  he 
decided  that  philosophy  is  rather  adapted  to  reasoning, 
and  that  the  moral  philosophers  with  the  greatest  powers 


go       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA  VICO 

of  reasoning  are  of  value  only  to  stimulate  the  senses  by 
their  eloquence  to  perform  the  duties  of  virtue,  while 
religion  alone  has  the  power  of  making  men  act  virtuously. 
Then  in  the  empirical  science  corresponding  to  this  part 
of  the  philosophy  of  mind,  Vico  turns  religion  (or  poetical 
metaphysic)  and  philosophy  into  two  historical  epochs, 
making  the  former  characteristic  of  the  barbaric  period  and 
the  latter  of  the  civilised.  He  maintains,  as  he  is  clearly 
bound  to  do,  that  religion  is  the  sole  foundation  of  all 
civilisation  and  of  philosophy  itself,  and  rejects  Polybius's 
saying  that  if  there  had  been  philosophers  in  the  world 
religion  would  have  been  unnecessary.  How  could  philo- 
sophy have  arisen,  he  objects,  had  not  states,  that  is, 
civilisation,  arisen  first  ?  and  how  could  states  have 
arisen  without  the  aid  of  religion  ?  Thus  the  saying 
ought  to  be  reversed  :  without  religion  there  is  no  philo- 
sophy. It  was  religion,  it  was  the  divine  providence 
that  tamed  the  sons  of  Polyphemus  and  reduced  them  to 
the  humanity  of  Aristides  and  Socrates,  of  Laelius  and 
Scipio  Africanus. 

The  conception  again  of  the  "  state  of  nature,"  which 
served  in  the  treatises  of  the  school  of  natural  rights  as  an 
hypothesis  and  a  means  of  exposition  with  a  view  either 
to  developing  the  argument  independently  of  mystical 
theology  without  evoking  too  many  protests,  or  to  convey- 
ing implicitly  their  utilitarian  theories,  acquired  in  Vico's 
hands  a  new  function  and  a  new  content.  A  perfectly 
honest  Catholic,  having  satisfied  his  conscience  by  separat- 
ing revealed  from  human  religion,  he  was  in  a  position  to 
assume  the  state  of  nature  as  a  literal  and  actual  reality. 
It  is  an  ideal  reality,  in  so  far  as  it  represents  in  the  dia- 
lectic of  the  practical  consciousness  a  moment  necessary 
for  the  genesis  of  reality,  the  pre-moral  moment  :  a  his- 
torical and  empirical  reality,  as  the  approximately  actual 
condition  of  those  periods  of  anarchy  and  disturbance 
which  precede  the  rise  of  civilisations  or  follow  upon  their 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  gi 

fall.  The  natural-right  school  acquiesced  more  or  less 
in  the  traditional  doctrine  of  the  church,  namely  that  the 
Gentiles,  in  the  dispersion  following  on  the  confusion  of 
Babel,  had  taken  away  with  them  a  residuum  of  revealed 
religion,  a  vague  memory  of  the  true  God,  and  that  hence 
arose  the  possibility  of  social  life  and  of  false  gods,  shadows 
of  the  true  God  :  and  thus  the  "  state  of  nature  "  had 
been  put  forward  in  their  system  as  something  abstract 
and  unreal.  Vico  worked  out  strictly  the  distinction 
between  Jews  and  Gentiles,  and  conceived  the  state  of 
nature  as  devoid  of  any  help  coming  from  previous  revela- 
tion :  as  a  state  in  which  man  stood  alone,  so  to  speak, 
face  to  face  with  his  own  chaotic  and  turbulent  passions. 
It  was  a  state  actually  without  morality,  but — in 
contradistinction  to  the  utilitarian  hypothesis — pregnant 
with  moral  requirements,  and  was  transcended  by  this 
implicit  character  becoming  explicit.  But  this  tran- 
scendence was  brought  about  naturally,  not  by  means  of 
divine  grace  :  the  true  divine  grace  is  human  nature 
itself,  shared  by  Gentiles  no  less  than  Jews,  all  equally 
illuminated  by  a  divine  light. 

Man's  will  is  free,  weak  though  it  is,  to  make  his  passions 
into  virtues ;  and  in  his  struggle  towards  virtue  he  is 
helped  in  a  natural  manner  by  God  through  providence. 
Certainly  Vico  did  not  intend  to  deny  the  efficacy  of 
direct  and  personal  divine  grace  as  well :  but  following 
his  usual  method  he  separates  the  latter  from  the  natural 
operation  of  providence,  which  is  the  only  question  of 
importance  for  him  and  the  only  one  he  considers.  So 
far  as  concerns  the  controversies  on  grace,  he  always  likes 
to  maintain  a  middle  position  between  two  extremes 
represented  typically,  according  to  him,  by  Pelagianism 
and  Calvinism  :  and  ever  since  as  a  young  man  he  studied 
the  works  of  Richard,  the  theologian  of  the  Sorbonne,  he 
had  accepted  his  demonstration  of  the  superiority  of  the 
Augustinian  doctrine,  just  because  it  was  intermediate 


92       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

between  these  extremes.  A  moderate  doctrine  of  this 
kind  seemed  to  him,  as  he  says,  to  provide  a  suitable 
foundation  for  a  principle  of  the  natural  rights  of  nations 
which  should  explain  the  origin  of  Roman  and  other 
Gentile  law,  while  at  the  same  time  remaining  in  agreement 
with  the  Catholic  religion.  He  was  inclined  to  admit 
that  there  was  a  privileged  nation,  namely  the  Jewish ; 
and  that  in  the  struggle  against  the  passions  the  Christian 
had  an  advantage  over  the  non-Christian,  because  in  cases 
where  natural  grace  failed  he  might  be  helped  by  super- 
natural. But,  in  a  word,  miracles  are  miracles,  and  the 
New  Science  is  not  a  science  of  the  miraculous. 

That  it  is  not,  is  proved  by  Vice's  criticism  on  the 
third  of  the  "  principles  "  of  natural  rights,  against  John 
Selden,  a  famous  man  in  his  day  though  forgotten  later, 
and  author  of  De  iure  naturali  et  gentium  iuxta  disciplinam 
Hebraeorum  (1640).  Selden  disagreed  with  Grotius,  in 
this  as  in  certain  other  questions,  in  not  denying,  and 
even  in  exalting,  the  value  of  religion  :  he  conceived  moral 
and  civil  life  impossible  for  mankind  except  through 
revelation.  This  revelation,  made  by  God  to  the  Jewish 
people,  passed  from  them  according  to  Selden  by  several 
channels  to  the  Gentiles  :  Pythagoras  for  instance  had 
learnt  from  Ezekiel ;  Aristotle,  at  the  time  of  the  campaigns 
of  Alexander  in  Asia,  formed  a  friendship  with  Simon  the 
Just ;  Numa  Pompilius  acquired  some  knowledge  of  the 
Bible  and  the  prophets.  This  was  enough  to  reassure 
any  believer  who  had  been  frightened  away  from  the 
works  of  the  natural -right  school  by  their  heterodox 
tendencies.  But  Vico  will  have  none  of  this  ultra-religious 
system.  If  Grotius  ignored  providence  and  Puffendorf 
denied  it,  Selden  was  wrong,  said  Vico,  in  supplying  it, 
making  it  a  deus  ex  machina,  without  explaining  it  by 
the  essential  character  of  the  human  mind.  It  was  a 
system  not  only  unphilosophical  but  incompatible  with 
sacred  history,  which  admits  to  a  certain  extent  even  in 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  93 

the  case  of  the  Jews  a  natural,  not  revealed,  law  :  and  it 
was  only  because,  during  the  captivity  in  Egypt,  they 
lost  sight  of  this  that  the  direct  intervention  of  God  with 
the  laws  given  to  Moses  took  place.  Nor  did  the  theory 
agree,  as  to  the  alleged  dissemination  of  Jewish  know- 
ledge and  laws  among  the  Gentiles,  with  the  words  of  the 
Jew  Josephus  and  of  Lactantius  ;  and  in  general,  it  was 
unsupported  by  even  the  smallest  documentary  evidence. 
Vico's  conclusion  therefore  remains  unaltered.  The  Jews 
enjoyed  in  addition  the  extraordinary  aid  of  the  true  God  : 
but  the  other  nations  attained  civilisation  solely  through 
the  ordinary  light  of  providence. 

Whether  or  no  Vico  quoted  and  interpreted  Grotius 
and  Puffendorf  accurately  is  for  us  a  question  of  small 
importance.  His  exposition  and  estimate  of  other  philo- 
sophers matter  less  than  his  own  doctrines,  whatever  their 
historical  relations,  which,  to  tell  the  truth,  are  many  in 
number.  Nevertheless  it  will  be  as  well  to  indicate 
briefly,  as  regards  the  difficulties  which  may  arise  upon 
this  point,  the  answer  which  we  think  plausible.  Any  one 
who  after  reading  Vico's  censures  opened  the  De  iure  belli 
et  pads  and  found  that  Grotius  explicitly  includes  among 
his  three  fundamental  principles,  with  reason  and  the 
social  nature,  the  divine  will,  and  that  this  ignoring  of  God 
amounts  to  little  more  than  a  mere  phrase  laying  emphasis 
on  the  power  of  the  social  nature  and  reason,  which  would 
take  effect  "  even  if  we  were  to  grant  that  God  does  not 
exist "  (etiamsi  daremus  non  esse  Deum)  or  that  he  does  not 
care  for  human  affairs,  "  which  cannot  be  granted  without 
the  grossest  impiety  "  (quod  sine  summo  seder e  dari  nequit] : 
any  one  who  opened  Puffendorf  and  read  a  most  solemn 
denunciation  of  the  Grotian  hypothesis  as  impious  and 
absurd,  and  a  declaration  that  natural  laws  would  remain 
hanging  in  the  air  devoid  of  force  apart  from  the  will  of 
God  as  legislator  ;  any  one  who  read  these  words  might 
be  led  to  accuse  Vico  of  negligence  or  even  of  insincerity 


94       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

in  his  criticisms  of  his  predecessors.  But  in  truth  Vico 
did  not  know  what  to  make  of  a  God  set  side  by  side  with 
other  sources  of  morality,  or  set  above  them  as  a  superfluous 
source  for  the  sources  :  he,  searching  for  God  as  he  did  in 
the  heart  of  man,  saw  and  felt  the  gulf  fixed  between  him 
and  those  who  no  longer  had  him  in  their  hearts  and  barely 
kept  him  on  their  lips  through  habit  or  prudence.  A 
more  subtle  question  would  be  to  ask  why, — if  Vico  agreed 
with  the  natural-right  school  in  ignoring  revelation,  and 
if  he  instead  of  rejecting  it  deepened  their  superficial 
immanental  doctrine, — why  he  put  himself  forward  as 
then*  implacable  enemy  and  persisted  in  boasting  loudly 
before  prelates  and  pontiffs  of  having  formulated  a  system 
of  natural  rights  different  from  that  of  the  three  Pro- 
testant authors  and  adapted  to  the  Roman  church.  The 
supposition  that  he  acted  thus  through  politic  caution 
might  be  advanced  if  instead  of  Vico  we  were  dealing 
with,  for  instance,  a  passionate  and  powerful  but  deceitful 
friar  like  Tommaso  Campanella :  but  the  spotless  char- 
acter of  Vico  entirely  precludes  it,  and  we  can  only  sup- 
pose that,  lacking  as  his  ideas  always  were  in  clarity, 
on  this  occasion  he  indulged  his  tendency  to  confusion 
and  nourished  his  illusions,  to  the  extent  of  conferring 
upon  himself  the  flattering  style  and  title  of  Defensor 
Ecclesiae  at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  destroying  the 
religion  of  the  church  by  means  of  the  religion  of  humanity. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

MORALITY  AND  LAW 

WITH  the  dazzling  light  of  his  originality  still  shining 
before  our  eyes,  it  is  impossible  to  fix  our  attention  upon 
those  doctrines  and  classifications  which  Vico  drew  from 
the  traditional  philosophy  and  placed  especially  in  the 
first  book  of  the  Diritto  universale  :  though  it  is  precisely 
these  that  have  become  favourites  with  many  readers, 
and  are  now  almost  common  property  through  the  frequent 
quotation  of  them.  That  God  is ' '  infinite  power  knowledge 
and  will "  (posse  nosse  velle  infinitum]  and  man  "  finite 
power  knowledge  and  will  struggling  towards  the  infinite  " 
(posse  nosse  velle  finitum  quod  tendit  ad  infinitum)  :  that 
the  state  is  the  image  of  God,  and  because  "  it  has  all 
things  beneath  it,  nothing  above  "  (omnia  infra  se,  nil 
superius  habet),  therefore  "  it  renders  account  to  God  alone 
and  to  no  one  else  "  (uni  Deo,  praeterea  reddat  rationem 
nemini),  and  that  just  as  in  God  freedom  is  inherent  in 
his  eternal  reason,  so  the  state  freely  obeys  the  laws  it 
has  itself  established  :  that  justice  "  directs  and  equates 
utilities  "  (utilitates  dirigit  et  exaequat),  directing,  like  an 
architect,  in  the  building-up  of  the  state,  the  two  particular 
kinds  of  justice,  commutative  and  distributive,  the  two 
divine  artisans  that  measure  utility  with  the  two  divine 
measures,  arithmetic  and  geometry,  so  that  "  what  is 
equal  when  you  measure  is  also  just  when  you  choose  " 
(quod  est  aequum  cum  metiris,  idem  est  iustum  quum  eligis), 

95 


g6       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

these  and  similar  assertions  seem  not  merely  lacking  in 
originality  but  even  false  or  meaningless,  adorned  though 
they  may  be  with  the  name  either  of  Aristotle  or  of  Cam- 
panella  or  of  other  philosophers  of  the  ancient  world  or 
the  Renaissance.  If,  to  take  one,  justice  consisted  in 
measuring,  a  philosophy  of  justice  would  be  unnecessary, 
for  the  science  of  calculation  and  measurement  would  be 
enough.  Vico  himself  at  one  point  involuntarily  and 
ingenuously  discloses  the  vicious  circle  of  this  metaphor 
substituted  for  a  concept,  by  saying  that  men  ought  "  to 
share  utility  equally  among  themselves,  only  preserving 
a  just  difference  where  it  is  a  question  of  desert,  and  that 
to  preserve  the  equality." 

More  profitable  than  collecting  these  second-hand 
formulae  would  be  to  collect  the  many  acute  observations 
of  moral  psychology  found  here  and  there  in  his  writings, 
expressed  in  his  gem-like  style  ;  or  to  recall  his  little-known 
theory  of  laughter,  which  he  derives  from  disappointed 
expectation  and  from  the  weakness  of  the  mind,  and  there- 
fore denies  the  faculty  both  to  animals  and  to  the  perfect 
man,  considering  a  man  who  laughs  to  be  a  satyr  or  faun, 
intermediate  between  a  brute  and  a  man.  But  abstaining 
from  such  a  collection,  which  forms  no  part  of  our  plan, 
we  would  rather  observe  that  even  in  the  commonplace 
distinctions  and  classifications  mentioned  above  Vico 
shows  a  certain  merit :  he  recognises,  even  while  he  pro- 
pounds them,  the  necessary  confusion  and  identification 
of  all  or  many  of  these  distinctions.  Thus  after  distin- 
guishing the  two  kinds  of  justice,  the  three  kinds  of  virtue 
and  the  three  kinds  of  law,  he  ends  by  declaring  that  these 
dualities,  triplicities  and  multiplicities  each  form  a  unity. 

Justice  and  virtue  also,  for  Vico,  form  a  unity,  since 
that  power  of  truth,  or  human  reason,  which  is  virtue  in 
so  far  as  it  struggles  with  selfishness,  is  also  justice  in  so 
far  as  it  directs  or  equates  utilities.  This  implies  that 
Vico  does  not  distinguish,  at  least  in  the  systematic 


MORALITY  AND  LA  W  g? 

exposition  of  the  Diritto  universale,  between  law  and 
morality :  a  distinction  which  indeed  received  little 
emphasis  in  the  doctrine  of  natural  rights,  and  is  barely 
indicated  in  Grotius,  for  instance,  as  one  between  a 
greater  and  less  degree  of  morality.  Vico's  doctrine  of 
punishment  is  also  purely  moral,  and  deduced  from  the 
ethical  concept  of  remorse.  It  is  inflicted,  he  says,  by 
the  law,  and  is  nothing  but  a  social  reinforcement  of  the 
individual  conscience,  in  the  case  where  the  offender  does 
not  himself  expiate  his  crime  by  means  of  remorse  and 
internal  punishment. 

But  the  more  the  problem  of  the  relation  between  law 
and  morality  is  absent  hi  Vico's  theoretical  formulation 
and  systematic  treatment,  the  more  present  it  is  in  his 
particular  observations  ;  indeed  it  may  be  said  to  pervade 
the  whole  of  the  New  Science.  Nor  could  it  be  otherwise, 
seeing  that  this  relation  refers  to  the  distinction  between 
the  moral  will  and  the  inferior  or  earlier  forms  of  will ;  and 
we  know  that  all  Vico's  tendencies  were  towards  exploring 
the  lower  and  obscure  region  of  the  mind,both  cognitive  and 
practical,  in  the  sphere  alikeof  imagination,  will  and  passion. 

He  always  realised  the  supreme  importance  of  the 
passions  ;  and  if  he  could  not  approve  of  giving  them 
the  upper  hand,  if  he  always  considered  the  Epicurean 
morality  a  morality  "  of  idlers  shut  up  in  their  pleasure- 
gardens,"  he  did  not  at  all  approve  of  excessively  severe 
moralities  such  as  that  of  the  Stoics,  which  was  no  less  than 
the  other  a  morality  of  "  solitaries,"  not  one  for  men 
living  in  a  state.  Stoicism  certainly  preaches  an  eternal 
and  immutable  justice,  and  makes  honour  the  criterion 
of  human  action  ;  but  it  does  violence  to  human  nature, 
dehumanises  it,  annuls  it  and  drives  it  to  despair  by 
pretending  that  it  is  quite  insensible  to  the  passions, 
by  ignoring  the  utility  and  necessity  of  the  bodily 
nature,  by  inculcating  that  rule  —  a  rule  "harder 
than  iron  " — that  sins  are  all  equal  and  that  he  who 

H 


0$       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

strikes  a  slave  is  as  guilty  as  he  who  kills  his  father. 
The  same  doubts  must  have  been  aroused  in  Vico's  mind 
by  Jansenism,  as  he  complains  that  "  out  of  hatred  of 
probability,  Christian  morality  in  France  is  becoming 
rigidified."  We  ought  to  follow  not  these  solitary  philo- 
sophers but  rather  those  political  ones,  especially  the 
Platonic  type,  which  recognises  that  the  passions  should 
be  not  eradicated  but  moderated  and  "  converted  into 
human  virtues."  Thus  out  of  cruelty,  avarice  and  ambi- 
tion, the  three  universal  faults  of  mankind,  Providence 
elicits  the  warrior,  the  merchant  and  the  judge  ;  the 
bravery,  wealth  and  wisdom  of  states.  From  these  three 
failings,  which  would  destroy  mankind  on  the  earth,  civil 
prosperity  is  formed. 

Concerning  matters  of  utility,  Vico  observes  that  "  in 
themselves,"  ex  se,  they  are  neither  good  nor  bad  (neque 
turpes  neque  honestae)  but  become  so  merely  through  their 
relation  to  the  moral  consciousness  ("  but  their  unfairness 
is  baseness,  their  fairness,  honour :  sed  earum  inaequalitas 
est  turpitudo,  aequalitas  autem  honestas  ").  In  the  empirical 
science  of  utility,  he  defends  against  Grotius  a  "  prior 
natural  law,"  ius  naturale  prius,  to  which  belong  self- 
defence  and  the  procreation  and  upbringing  of  children  : 
and  this  right  he  connects  with  the  Stoic  aSidfopov.  That 
it  has  no  moral  authority  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
law  which  follows  it  in  the  historical  order,  the  "posterior 
natural  law,"  ius  naturale  posterius,  defined  by  Justinian 
as  "  that  which  is  established  among  all  men  by  natural 
reason  and  is  preserved  by  all  nations  alike "  (quod 
naturalis  ratio  inter  omnes  homines  constituit  et  apud 
omnes  gentes  peraeque  custoditur],  is  prior  in  the  order  of 
right,  prius  iure,  overcomes  the  former  when  they  con- 
flict and  sets  upon  it  the  seal  of  immutability.  Now, 
although  this  first  natural  law  is  defined  and  exemplified 
in  a  merely  empirical  manner,  it  is  surely  at  bottom 
nothing  but  pure  law,  law  not  yet  moralised. 


MORALITY  AND  LA  W  09 

But  it  is  upon  the  concept  of  "  certitude  "  that  law  as 
distinct  from  morality  properly,  according  to  Vico,  rests. 
The  word  certitude  is  used  by  him  in  many  senses,  neither 
clearly  distinguished  nor  harmonised  nor  deduced  one 
from  another :  though  they  all  as  we  have  seen  unite, 
rather  confusedly,  in  the  general  idea  of  the  spontaneous 
as  distinguished  from  the  reflective  form  of  the  mind. 
Certitude  in  its  practical  signification  implies  among  other 
things  an  opposition  to  the  "  truth  "  of  volition,  and  is, 
in  a  word,  force  as  against  equity  and  justice,  authority 
as  against  reason,  mere  will  as  against  the  moral  will. 
These  are  distinctions  occurring  to  our  own  thoughts, 
rather  than  stated  by  Vico,  who  both  distinguishes  and 
fails  to  distinguish.  For  instance,  he  affirms  that  "  certi- 
tude proceeds  from  authority,  truth  from  reason  "  (cerium 
ab  auctoritate  est,  verum  a  ratione)  and  immediately  after- 
wards adds  that  '*  it  is  quite  impossible  for  authority  to 
conflict  with  reason,  for  in  that  case  there  would  be  not  laws 
but  abortive  laws  "  (auctoritas  cum  ratione  omnino  pugnare 
non  potest,  nam  ita  non  leges  essent,  sed  monstra  legum). 
At  any  rate,  the  New  Science  seems  to  him,  by  reason  of 
this  treatment  of  certitude,  to  contain  a  philosophy  of 
authority,  which,  he  adds,  "  is  the  source  of  what  theo- 
logical moralists  call  external  justice."  That  is  to  say, 
he  connected  the  concept  of  certitude  with  the  distinc- 
tion and  terminology  of  external  and  internal,  already 
employed  by  the  scholastic  morality,  which,  used  about 
this  time  by  Christianus  Thomasius,  were  destined  without 
any  great  philosophical  merit  on  his  part  to  give  an 
impetus  to  the  investigation  of  the  philosophical  relations 
between  law  and  morality. 

Another  and  kindred  meaning  of  practical  certitude  in 
Vico  is  the  so-called  letter  of  the  law,  formula  legum  ; 
which  may  stand  in  opposition  to  reason  and  the  moral 
consciousness,  but  none  the  less  has  its  own  peculiar 
value  :  "  dura  lex,  sed  certa  :  durum  sed  scriptum  est — the 


ioo      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

law  is  harsh,  but  it  is  certain;  it  is  harsh,  but  so  it  is 
written."  It  is  in  a  word  the  value  of  law  simply  as  law, 
which  though  devoid  of  any  real  ethical  content  yet  has 
always  the  value  that  comes  from  a  command  over  the 
will.  "  The  certitude  of  law  "  (writes  Vico)  "  is  a  darken- 
ing of  the  reason  supported  merely  by  authority,  and 
makes  the  law  harsh  in  practical  experience  by  laying 
down  their  certitude,  which  in  good  Latin  (cerium)  means 
particularised,  or  in  the  scholastic  terminology  indi- 
vidualised." To  a  certain  extent  Vico  grasped  the 
individual  character  which  lies  at  the  root  of  every  law. 
That  one  must  "  judge  according  to  law,  not  according  to 
example  "  (legibus  non  exemplis  iudicandum)  is  a  com- 
paratively late  principle :  the  first  laws  were  strictly 
"exempla,  "  exemplary  punishments.  From  real  examples 
were  derived  the  ideal  examples  employed  by  logic  and 
rhetoric  :  and  when  the  intelligible  universal  was  under- 
stood, it  was  recognised  that  law  had  a  certain  universal 
character. 

The  primitive  society  sketched  by  Vico  is,  in  its  juristic 
aspect,  the  myth  so  to  speak  of  pure  law  or  practical 
force.  Once  upon  a  time  men  lived  possessed  of  immense 
bodily  strength,  and  proportionately  feeble  in  under- 
standing, who  thought  all  strength  greater  than  their  own 
divine,  and  this  belief  constituted  their  law.  They  thought 
of  the  gods  simply  as  beings  stronger  than  themselves, 
whom  they  were  compelled  to  obey,  though  with  a  bad 
grace  :  like  Polyphemus,  who  if  he  had  been  strong 
enough  would  have  fought  Zeus  himself,  or  Achilles,  who 
told  Apollo  that  if  only  they  were  equally  matched  he 
would  not  hesitate  to  try  his  strength  against  him.  The 
wisdom  of  providence  decreed  that  these  fierce  men,  not 
tamed  as  yet  by  the  rule  of  reason,  should  at  least  fear  the 
divine  nature  of  force  and  measure  reason  by  its  standard. 
This  is  the  foundation  of  the  principle  of  the  "  external 
justice  of  war."  But  the  myth  of  the  period  of  force 


MORALITY  AND  LA  W  101 

cannot  have  the  strictness  of  a  philosophical  concept, 
and  consequently  these  strong  men  are  considered  by 
Vico  from  another  point  of  view  as  ethically  the  best : 
"  strongest  "  and  "  best,"  fortissimi  and  optimi,  are  re- 
garded as  synonymous  terms  :  and  their  law,  though  not 
truth  or  rational  law,  is  not  pure  certitude,  but  truth 
"  mixed  with  certitude,"  ex  certo  mixtum.  But  the  very 
mixture  of  certitude  with,  and  its  preponderance  over, 
truth,  which  is  here  asserted,  postulates  the  concept 
of  pure  certitude  as  presupposed  by  Vico. 

When  Vico  accused  Grotius  and  the  school  of  natural 
rights  of  commencing  their  history  half-way,  with  the 
civilised  ages,  and  overlooking  the  earlier  periods,  the 
accusation,  in  its  bearing  upon  the  philosophy  of  practice, 
may  be  translated  into  a  charge  of  ignoring  the  ideal 
moment  of  force  and  confining  the  attention  to  justice, 
equity  and  morality.  The  moment  of  force,  constituting 
the  other  and  earlier  "  half,"  was  the  field  chosen  by 
Hobbes,  before  him  by  Machiavelli,  and  still  earlier  by 
Epicurus,  all  of  whom  treated  of  this  moment  alone, 
"  with  impiety  towards  God,  infamy  to  rulers  and  injustice 
towards  nations."  Hence  the  conclusion  is  easy,  that  in 
refuting  the  utilitarians  and  the  theorists  of  force,  Vico 
was  at  the  same  time  recognising  and  absorbing  the  need 
which  they  represented,  their  only  mistake  having  been 
that  they  developed  this  need  in  an  abstract  and  one- 
sided way.  His  "  state  of  nature  "  is  in  some  respects 
like  that  of  Hobbes,  with  the  difference  that  mankind 
transcends  the  latter  owing  to  the  recognition  of  utility, 
the  former  owing  to  the  religious  and  moral  consciousness. 
But  Vico  does  not  on  this  account  express  any  gratitude 
to  Hobbes  or  Spinoza,  Machiavelli  or  Epicurus,  since  he 
believed  himself  to  have  found  in  a  classical  author  all 
the  materials  and  the  stimulus  he  required,  all  the  counter- 
poise necessary  to  the  Platonic  philosophy.  This  was 
one  of  his  "  four  authors,"  the  one  of  whom  we  said 


109       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

earlier  that  we  had  still  to  see  the  use  which  Vico  made, 
namely  Tacitus.  This  writer  for  his  part  contemplates 
with  his  unequalled  metaphysical  powers  man  as  he  is, 
while  Plato  contemplates  him  as  he  ought  to  be.  Just 
as  Plato  in  his  universal  science  explores  every  corner  of 
nobility,  so  Tacitus  "  descends  into  every  scheme  of 
utility,"  in  order  that  among  the  infinite  chaotic  chances  of 
malice  and  fortune  the  man  of  practical  wisdom  may  act 
well.  To  the  union  in  his  mind  of  Greek  philosopher  and 
Roman  historian,  which  he  interprets,  as  is  easily  seen,  in 
the  manner  usual  among  the  "  Tacitean  "  politicians  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  Vico  attributes  his  own  success 
in  sketching  a  real  idea  of  eternal  history,  "  which  the 
wise  man  would  construct  both  of  esoteric  wisdom  such  as 
Plato's,  and  of  common  wisdom  such  as  that  of  Tacitus." 
To  Tacitus,  finally,  he  owed  the  impulse  towards  the 
supreme  task  of  making  concrete  his  ideal,  and  realising 
the  republic  of  Plato  in  the  "  dregs  of  Romulus." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  HISTORICAL  ASPECT  OF  LAW 

As  the  cognitive  mind  passes  from  feeling  without  noticing 
to  noticing  with  disturbed  and  confused  faculties,  and  thence 
to  the  reflection  of  the  clear  mind,  so  analogously  the  voli- 
tional mind  passes  from  the  state  of  nature  to  practical 
certitude  and  thence  to  practical  truth.  In  the  correlative 
empirical  science,  the  transition  is  more  or  less  that  from  the 
savage  to  the  heroic  or  barbaric  condition  and  from  the 
latter  to  the  civilised.  In  these  three  types  of  society,  all 
the  manifestations  of  life  correspond :  thus  there  are  three 
kinds  of  character,  three  kinds  of  manners  and  customs, 
three  kinds  of  law  and  therefore  of  states,  three  kinds  of 
language  and  writing,  three  kinds  of  authority,  reason  and 
justice,  and  three  divisions  of  history.  Confused  and 
sometimes  self -contradictory  though  Vico  may  be  in 
fixing  the  particulars  of  these  various  correspondences, 
his  general  idea  is  plain.  Where  reflection  is  at  a  low  ebb 
and  imagination  flourishes,  the  passions  also  flourish, 
habits  are  violent,  governments  aristocratic  or  feudal, 
families  subjected  to  strict  paternal  rule,  laws  severe, 
legal  procedure  symbolical,  language  couched  in  metaphor 
and  writing  in  hieroglyphics.  Where  on  the  other  hand 
reflection  predominates,  poetry  becomes  either  separate 
from  or  charged  with  philosophy,  manners  and  customs 
lose  their  violence,  the  passions  are  brought  into  subjection, 
the  people  take  the  government  into  their  own  hands, 

103 


104      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

all  members  of  the  family  are  alike  citizens  of  the  state, 
law  is  mitigated  by  equity  and  its  procedure  simplified, 
language  loses  its  metaphorical  clothing  and  writing  be- 
comes alphabetical.  Mixed  forms,  which  some  politicians 
aim  at  producing  artificially,  would  be  abortions  :  and 
though  we  do  find  natural  hybrid  forms  which  retain  a  tinge 
of  the  earlier,  each  one,  by  reason  of  its  own  unity,  always 
tries  so  far  as  possible  to  divest  its  subject  of  every  property 
belonging  to  other  forms. 

Which  of  the  various  social  types  forms  the  foundation 
of  the  others  and  supplies  the  criterion  for  judging  them  ? 
or  what  is  the  criterion  and  standard  by  which  they  must 
all  alike  be  judged  ?  For  Vico,  such  a  question  is  mean- 
ingless. Governments,  he  says,  must  adapt  themselves 
to  the  nature  of  the  people  governed  :  the  school  of 
princes  is  the  morality  of  nations.  We  may  shudder 
at  war,  at  the  law  of  the  stronger,  at  the  reduction  of 
the  conquered  to  slavery,  that  is,  to  chattels  :  but  the 
society  which  expressed  itself  in  these  customs  was 
necessary  and  therefore  good.  The  worship  of  strength, 
as  we  have  said,  occupied  the  position  and  discharged 
the  function  of  the  as  yet  impossible  rule  of  reason.  Later 
came  the  period  of  fully  developed  human  reason,  when 
men  no  longer  valued  each  other  by  the  standard  of  force, 
but  by  virtue  of  their  rational  nature,  which  is  the  true 
and  eternal  human  nature,  recognised  one  another  as 
equals.  The  change  of  time  brought  change  of  customs  : 
and  the  new  were  no  less  good,  but  no  more  so,  than 
the  old. 

It  would  be  as  useless  to  seek  the  common  measure  of 
these  various  social  types,  as  to  ask  what  is  the  real  age 
of  the  individual  life,  the  common  measure  of  childhood, 
youth,  maturity  and  old  age.  The  comparison  is  one 
presented  by  Vico  himself.  As  children  shape  all  their 
ideas  according  to  their  whims  and  carry  them  out  with 
violence,  as  youths  animate  everything  by  their  imagina- 


THE  HISTORICAL  ASPECT  OF  LA  W  105 

tion,  as  grown  men  guide  their  affairs  rather  by  pure 
reason  and  old  men  by  sound  prudence  ;  so  it  is  with  the 
human  race,  which  after  its  feeble,  isolated  and  poverty- 
stricken  origins,  grows  at  first  in  unrestrained  liberty, 
then  rediscovers  the  necessaries,  utilities  and  comforts  of  life 
by  genius  and  imagination  (the  age  of  poetry),  and  finally 
cultivates  wisdom  by  means  of  reason  (the  age  of  philo- 
sophy). Similarly,  natural  right  arose  first  in  laws  so  to 
speak  of  just  passion  and  just  violence :  then  it  was  clothed 
in  various  myths  of  just  reason  :  and  finally  it  was  openly 
proclaimed  in  its  pure  rationality  and  noble  truth. 

By  such  a  method  of  handling  and  passing  judgment 
upon  governments,  laws  and  customs,  Vico  escaped 
another  of  the  leading  doctrines  or  suppositions  of  the 
school  of  natural  rights,  the  abstraction  and  anti-historicism 
we  mentioned  in  its  own  place,  which  resulted  in  the 
conception  of  a  natural  law  standing  above  positive  law 
and  therefore  constituting  a  kind  of  eternal  code,  a  perfect 
scheme  of  legislation,  not  yet  fully  actual  but  to  be 
actualised,  whose  outlines  show  up  clearly  in  the  works 
of  the  school  through  their  veil  of  doctrine  and  philosophy. 
But  this  eternal  code  was  in  its  most  important  part  a 
contingent  and  transitory  code  ;  or  at  least  it  advocated 
a  code  in  agreement  with  the  reformatory  and  revolutionary 
tendencies  of  these  writers,  publicists  as  they  were  rather 
than  philosophers. 

Vico  rids  himself  of  the  ideal  eternal  code  without 
seeming  to  do  so  :  though  he  is  quite  ready  to  recognise 
that  the  "  philosophers'  natural  right,"  ius  naturale 
philosophorum,  is  in  idea  eternal,  and  inexorably  laid 
down  "  in  accordance  with  eternal  reason,"  ad  ration-is 
aeternae  libellam.  But  from  this  verbal  concession  of 
eternity  made  out  of  respect  for  the  old  traditional 
scholastic  philosophy,  whose  influence  he  felt  now  and 
then,  he  goes  on  to  deny  its  real  eternity  and  supra- 
historical  character  ;  since  instead  of  placing  it  above 


io6      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

and  outside  history  he  puts  it  in  the  place  which  belongs 
to  it,  within  history.  The  law  of  violence  or  heroic  law, 
after  passing  into  the  law  of  uncivilised  society,  gradually 
attains  a  certain  limit  of  clarity,  in  which  state  the  only 
thing  wanting  to  its  perfection  is  that  some  school  of 
philosophers  should  complete  it  by  establishing  it  with 
reasoned  principles,  upon  the  idea  of  eternal  justice  : 
and  this  reasoning  and  systematisation  is  the  "  ius  natu- 
rale  philosophorum,"  the  extreme  form  of  the  historical 
development  of  law,  not  its  unchanging  rule  ;  a  product, 
not  a  standard.  Hence  Vico's  charge  against  Grotius 
of  confusing  the  "ius  naturale  philosophorum,"  the  law 
composed  of  reasoned  principles  derived  from  moralists, 
theologians  and,  in  part,  jurists,  with  the  natural  law  of 
nations,  ius  naturale  gentium  (in  Grotius's  language,  confus- 
ing natural  law  with  an  arbitrary  or  positive  form  of  law) : 
of  misunderstanding  the  Roman  jurists,  who  intended 
to  speak  solely  of  the  latter  :  and  of  offering  to  correct  and 
venturing  to  criticise  writers  whose  faults  on  inspection 
vanish. 

The  eternal  code,  considered  in  its  essentials,  is  a 
Utopia :  and  since  the  first  and  greatest  of  Utopias  is 
Plato's  Republic,  it  is  important,  in  order  better  to  decide 
the  point  at  issue,  to  examine  Vico's  attitude  towards  the 
political  scheme  of  Plato.  If  we  may  listen  to  his  own 
words,  the  Republic  was  another  of  his  many  incentives 
and  examples  when  he  conceived  the  New  Science.  With 
the  study  of  Plato  began  the  unconscious  awakening  in 
him  of  "  the  thought  of  conceiving  an  ideal  eternal  law, 
to  be  expressed  in  a  universal  state  built  on  the  idea  or 
plan  of  providence,  on  which  idea,  indeed,  are  founded 
all  the  states  of  every  period  and  race  :  an  ideal  Republic 
like  that  which  Plato  ought,  as  a  consequence  of  his 
divine  metaphysic,  to  have  conceived."  He  ought,  but 
could  not,  owing  to  his  "  ignorance  of  the  first  man's 
fall  "  ;  ignorance,  that  is,  of  the  original  state  of  nature 


THE  HISTORICAL  ASPECT  OF  LA  W  107 

and  of  the  exclusively  poetic  or  "  common  "  wisdom 
which  followed  it :  an  ignorance  maintained  by  the  error, 
common  to  the  minds  of  all  men,  of  measuring  by  oneself 
the  almost  unknown  nature  of  other  people,  as  Plato 
exalted  the  rude  and  barbaric  beginnings  of  Gentile  man 
to  the  perfect  state  of  his  loftiest  esoteric  knowledge  of  the 
divine,  and  fancied  these  earliest  men  to  possess  a  high 
degree  of  this  esoteric  wisdom,  whereas  on  the  contrary 
they  were  really  "  brutes,  all  stupidity  and  ferocity." 
In  consequence  of  this  learned  error  Plato,  instead  of 
conceiving  an  eternal  Republic  and  the  laws  of  an  eternal 
justice  by  which  Providence  governs  the  nations  of  the 
world  and  directs  it  by  means  of  the  common  needs  of 
mankind,  by  which  it  is  led  to  the  common  consciousness 
of  the  whole  human  race,  "  conceived  an  ideal  Republic 
and  a  merely  ideal  justice,  by  which  nations  are  not 
guided  at  all."  In  fact,  they  ought  not  to  be  guided  by 
it :  since  among  the  determinations  of  the  perfect  state 
there  are  some  which  are  dishonourable  and  detestable, 
such  as  the  community  of  wives.  Thus  Vico  took  from 
Plato  the  idea  of  an  eternal  state,  but  entirely  inverted 
it  by  the  reservation  which  he  added  to  it,  that  the  true 
eternal  republic  is  not  the  abstract  state  of  Plato,  but  the 
course  of  history  in  all  its  phases,  including  the  brutes  at 
one  end  and  Plato  at  the  other.  This  is  the  "  republic  of 
mankind,"  the  "  great  state  of  mankind,"  the  "  universal 
republic"  (generis  humani  respublica,  magna  generis  humani 
civitas,  respublicauniversa)  of  which  he  means  to  investigate 
the  "  form,  ranks,  societies,  occupations,  laws,  crimes, 
punishments,  and  science  of  jurisprudence "  (formam 
ordines  societates  negotia  leges  peccata  poenas  et  scientiam 
in  ea  tractandi  iuris)  and  to  follow  the  development  of  all 
these  "  from  their  origin,  the  beginnings  of  humanity, 
under  the  control  of  divine  Providence,  national  custom 
and  authority  "  (a  suis  usque  primis  humanitatis  originibus, 
divina  providentia  moderante,  moribus  gentium  ac  proinde 


io8      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA  VICO 

auctoritate) ,  that  is  to  say,  "  by  means  of  the  various 
elements  of  human  utility  and  necessity,  or  even  by 
means  of  opportunities  arising  by  the  spontaneous  action 
of  circumstances  "  (per  varia  utilitatum  ct  necessitaium 
humanarwn  rudimenta,  sive  adeo  per  ipsarum  sponte 
rerum  oblatas  occasiones).  The  "  great  state  of  the  nations 
founded  and  governed  by  God  "  is  thus  nothing  else  than 
History. 

While  refusing  a  fixed  code  and  the  draft  of  a  model 
society,  we  do  not  mean  to  deny  the  possibility  of  a 
practical  aspect  of  the  science  conceived  by  Vico,  the 
New  Science  in  its  triple  form  of  ideal  history,  typical 
history  and  historical  history.  Every  truth  has  its 
practical  side,  that  is  to  say,  its  practical  consequences : 
and  thinking  in  this  or  that  way  of  the  nature  and  develop- 
ment of  mankind  involves  this  or  that  practical  line  of 
conduct.  A  man  who  believes  for  instance  in  the  docile 
innocence  of  savage  races  will  approach  them  with  a  smile 
on  his  face,  kindly  words  on  his  lips  and  the  alphabet  and 
catechism  of  rights  and  duties  in  his  hand :  one  who 
believes  in  Vice's  "  brutes  "  will  adopt  somewhat  sterner 
methods,  perhaps  even  fire  and  the  sword.  One  who, 
like  Vico,  believes  that  "  custom  is  more  potent  than 
law "  and  that  "  custom  changes  not  at  a  blow,  but 
gradually  and  slowly "  will  not  be  inclined  to  hasty 
legislation,  and  will  not  delude  himself  into  thinking  he  can 
remodel  human  nature  after  an  ideal  of  his  own  devising. 
Such  conduct  in  any  case  is  not  theory,  but  practice  : 
and  when  the  attempt  is  made  to  reduce  it  to  theory, 
either  a  chaotic  confusion  of  necessary  and  contingent 
determinations  results,  or  else  if  we  avoid  these  errors 
and  strive  to  attain  a  strictly  doctrinal  form  of  conduct, 
we  get  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  scientific  theory 
itself,  from  which  our  conduct  derived. 

The  thought  of  following  up  the  New  Science  with  a 
practical  theory  appropriate  to  it  evidently  occurred  to 


THE  HISTORICAL  ASPECT  OF  LAW  tog 

Vico.  Even  in  the  first  Italian  edition  of  the  work  he 
stated  two  "  practical  "  corollaries :  first,  a  new  art  of 
criticism,  to  serve  as  a  light  to  distinguish  the  truth  hi 
obscure  and  legendary  history ;  and  secondly  an  art  of 
diagnosis,  so  to  speak,  for  determining  the  degrees  of 
necessity  or  utility  hi  human  affairs,  and  as  its  ultimate 
consequence,  the  chief  end  of  this  science,  consisting  in 
the  recognition  of  indubitable  symptoms  of  the  conditions 
of  nations.  Properly  considered,  these  arts  of  criticism 
and  diagnosis  unite  into  one,  namely  the  better  knowledge 
which  it  was  possible,  owing  to  the  principles  laid  down 
by  Vico,  to  obtain  concerning  the  past  and  present  life  of 
nations. 

This  idea  is  repeated  and  explained  in  other  parts  of  the 
same  work.  The  sciences,  studies  and  arts  developed  up 
to  now,  says  Vico,  deal  with  particular  objects :  the 
New  Science,  on  the  other  hand,  investigating  as  it  does 
the  principles  themselves  which  lie  at  the  source  of  all 
studies,  is  able  to  establish  the  o/c/n?  or  state  of  perfection 
of  the  entire  system,  and  the  degrees  and  extremes  by 
which  and  within  which  human  nature  like  all  other 
mortal  things  must  run  its  course  and  come  to  an  end  : 
so  that  through  this  science  we  can  answer  the  practical 
questions  how  a  nation  in  its  rise  may  come  to  its  state  of 
perfection,  and  how  in  its  decadence  it  may  be  stimu- 
lated to  new  life.  The  state  of  perfection  would  consist 
hi  a  nation's  resting  upon  fixed  principles  both  demon- 
strated by  unchanging  reason  and  put  into  practice  by 
human  habits  ;  principles  hi  which  the  esoteric  wisdom 
of  the  philosopher  would  extend  a  helping  hand  to  the 
common  wisdom  of  nations,  thus  uniting  men  of  the 
greatest  academic  reputation  with  all  those  of  wisdom  in 
the  state,  the  philosophers  with  the  statesmen  ;  and  the 
science  of  civil  matters  divine  and  human,  religion  and 
law,  a  theology  and  morality  imposed  by  command  and 
acquired  by  habituation,  would  be  supplemented  by  the 


no      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

science  of  natural  laws  divine  and  human,  a  theology  and 
morality  imposed  by  reason  and  acquired  by  ratiocina- 
tion :  so  that  to  transgress  such  principles  would  be  true 
error,  the  wandering  not  of  men  but  of  wild  animals. 

The  practical  aspect  of  the  New  Science,  then,  was 
simply  a  summary  or  duplicate  of  the  science  itself, 
emphasising  the  two  leading  elements  of  spontaneous 
and  reflective  wisdom,  certitude  and  truth,  and  the 
necessity  of  bearing  both  in  mind. 

Years  later,  in  one  of  the  elaborations  of  the  second 
Scienza  Nuova  made  by  Vico,  we  again  meet  with  the  idea 
and  the  phrase  of  a  practical  aspect  of  this  science,  in  the 
title  of  a  special  concluding  paragraph  which  he  proposed 
to  add  to  his  work.  It  begins  thus  :  "  The  whole  of  this 
work  has  now  been  thought  out  as  a  mere  contemplative 
science  dealing  with  the  common  character  of  nations  : 
for  this  reason  it  may  seem  to  offer  no  assistance  to  human 
prudence  in  order  either  to  prevent  or  to  delay  the  entire 
ruin  of  nations  on  the  path  of  decadence,  and  thus  to 
lack  the  practical  side  which  every  science  must  have 
whose  subject-matter  is  dependent  upon  the  human 
will,  all  such  sciences  being  called  practical."  Now  in 
what  could  such  a  practical  side  consist  ?  "  This  practical 
application  can  easily  be  found  from  the  contemplation 
itself  of  the  course  of  the  history  of  nations  :  which  the 
wise  men  (statesmen)  and  princes  of  states  observing, 
could  by  means  of  good  ordinances,  laws  and  examples 
recall  peoples  to  their  cucp?  or  state  of  perfection."  In 
other  words  :  a  man  warned  is  half  saved.  Contempla- 
tion is  the  only  principle  of  conduct  which  the  New  Science 
can  supply.  The  other  half  of  salvation  depends  not  on 
the  person  warning,  namely  thought,  but  upon  the  person 
warned,  upon  action.  It  does  not  occur  to  Vico  to  try 
to  determine  the  "  ordinances,  laws  and  examples  "  whose 
adoption  would  be  of  value  in  this  or  that  crisis  or  situa- 
tion. This  would  not  be  a  philosopher's  task,  as  in  fact 


THE  HISTORICAL  ASPECT  OF  LA  W  HI 

he  himself  clearly  recognises  next  moment,  when  he  says  : 
"  The  only  practical  principles  we  philosophers  can  supply 
are  ones  which  can  be  confined  to  the  academic  sphere." 
It  would  certainly  be  rash  to  claim  precise  knowledge 
of  Vice's  reasons  for  omitting  this  note  on  practical 
principles  in  the  final  manuscript  of  the  last  edition 
of  the  Scienza  Nuova,  just  as  he  had  omitted  in  the 
second  work  of  that  title  the  assertions  on  the  subject 
which  had  appeared  in  the  first.  But  we  may  at  least 
venture  to  guess  that  the  principal  reason  was  the  obvious 
emptiness  of  this  passage,  promising  as  it  did  a  practical 
application  which  it  failed  to  provide,  and  finally  confess- 
ing that  such  a  practical  application  was  either  impossible 
or  already  included  in  the  theory  itself. 


CHAPTER  X 

PROVIDENCE 

THE  true  and  only  reality  then,  in  the  world  of  nations, 
is  the  course  of  their  history :  and  the  principle  which 
regulates  this  course  is  Providence.  From  this  point 
of  view  the  New  Science  may  be  defined  as  a  "  rational 
civil  theology  of  the  divine  providence."  Bacon,  among 
his  historical  sciences,  had  named  a  Historia  Nemeseos 
(history  of  Divine  Retribution).  What  for  Bacon  was 
little  more  than  a  mere  name  was  for  Vico  a  clearly 
stated  problem  and  a  developed  theory.  Philosophers, 
according  to  him,  when  they  did  not  ignore  Providence 
entirely,  as  materialists  and  determinists,  considered  it 
solely  in  the  sphere  of  natural  law,  calling  metaphysic 
by  the  name  of  "  natural  theology,"  and  supporting  the 
identification  of  God  with  the  natural  order  observed  in 
the  motions  of  bodies,  such  as  the  spheres  and  the  elements, 
and  with  the  final  cause  which  was  seen  to  exist  over 
and  above  the  other  natural  causes.  As  against  all  this 
it  was  important  to  work  out  the  doctrine  of  Providence 
"  in  the  economy  of  matters  civil." 

It  was  observed  by  some  of  his  earliest  commentators, 
and  the  observation  has  been  frequently  repeated  since, 
that  Vico  used  the  word  "  providence  "  indifferently  in  a 
subjective  and  an  objective  sense  :  sometimes  to  indicate 
the  human  belief  in  a  provident  deity  controlling  their 
doctrine,  sometimes  to  denote  the  actual  operation  of 

112 


PROVIDENCE  113 

this  providence.  The  double  or  triple  meaning  of  a 
single  word  in  Vico's  terminology  is  a  thing  which  by  now 
need  cause  no  astonishment.  We  have  often  already  been 
obliged  to  take  pains  to  distinguish  his  homonyms  and 
unite  his  synonyms.  Hence  we  may  at  once  recognise 
that  one  meaning  of  "  Providence  "  for  Vico  might  be 
and  indeed  is  the  belief  in  Providence,  man's  idea  of  God, 
first  in  the  form  of  myth  and  later  in  the  pure  and  rational 
form  of  philosophy.  The  Gentile  nations  of  antiquity, 
he  says,  "  began  their  metaphysical  poetic  wisdom  by 
contemplating  God  in  the  attribute  of  his  providence,"  . 
upon  which  rested  augury  and  divination.  Without  this 
idea,  then,  wisdom,  the  consciousness  of  the  infinite,  / 
cannot  take  shape  within  man,  nor  can  morality,  the 
fear  of  and  respect  for  the  higher  power  which  governs 
the  affairs  of  men,  arise.  But  in  this  sense  of  the  word 
a  further  discussion  of  providence  is  unnecessary,  after 
what  we  have  said  on  the  subjects  of  mythology  and  of 
the  relation  between  morality  and  religion. 

We  therefore  pass  at  once  to  Providence  in  its  second 
sense,  the  real  and  strict  conception  of  it ;  and  here  it 
seems  advisable  to  leave  Vico  for  a  moment  and  to  clear 
up  certain  points  of  doctrine. 

It  is  a  common  observation  that  to  create  a  given  fact 
is  one  thing,  to  know  it  when  created  quite  another.  The  ' 
knowledge  of  what  a  fact  really  is  often  comes  in  the  life 
of  the  individual  years  later,  in  the  life  of  mankind 
centuries  later,  than  the  fact  itself.  The  very  persons 
who  are  directly  responsible  for  a  given  fact  as  a  rule  do 
not  know  it,  or  know  it  in  a  very  imperfect  and  fallacious 
manner  ;  so  much  so  that  the  illusions  which  are  said  to 
accompany  human  activity  have  passed  into  a  proverb. 
The  poet  thinks  he  is  singing  of  purity  when  he  is  really 
singing  of  sensuality,  and  of  strength  while  he  is  really 
singing  of  weakness  ;  he  believes  himself  to  be  a  dreadful 
pessimist  and  is  really  childishly  optimistic  :  imagines 

i 


ii4      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

himself  a  devil,  when  he  is  a  good  fellow  without  an  ounce 
of  vice  in  him.  Philosophers  deceive  themselves  no  less. 
We  need  not  go  far  to  find  examples.  The  philosopher 
we  are  studying  supplies  a  whole  series  of  them  ;  few 
have  been  more  in  the  dark  as  to  the  real  tendencies  of 
their  own  thought.  The  politician  also  deceives  himself ; 
very  often  he  believes  and  declares  himself  to  be  fighting 
for  liberty  while  he  is  a  mere  reactionary,  or  while  believ- 
ing himself  to  be  serving  the  cause  of  reaction  is  really 
inciting  to  revolt  and  aiding  the  cause  of  freedom  :  and 
so  on.  Such  illusions  are  easy  to  understand.  Indi- 
viduals and  nations  in  the  heat  of  creation,  or  scarcely 
yet  passing  out  of  such  a  state,  can  perhaps  express  their 
state  of  mind,  but  cannot  treat  it  in  the  critical  spirit 
of  historical  narration :  and  accordingly,  when  they 
cannot  reconcile  themselves  to  waiting  in  silence,  they 
compose  imaginary  histories  of  themselves,  Wahrheiten 
und  Dichtungen  at  once.  In  fact  this  proved  difficulty 
of  understanding  one's  actions  while  acting  is  one  motive 
of  the  wise  advice  to  speak  of  oneself  as  little  as  possible 
and  of  the  suspicion  with  which  autobiographies  and 
memoirs  are  regarded.  Such  works  are  interesting  and 
possibly  even  valuable  ;  but  they  never  present  the  strict 
historical  truth  of  the  facts  they  narrate. 

Human  labours  are  thus  veiled  in  the  mists  of  illusion 
which  arise  from  individuals.  The  superficial  historian 
clings  to  the  veil,  and  in  his  attempt  to  describe  the  course 
of  events,  uses  these  illusions  to  make  his  voice  carry. 
In  this  way  the  history  of  poetry  takes  the  form  of  a 
narration  of  the  intentions,  opinions  and  aims  of  poets, 
or  of  those  attributed  to  them  by  their  contemporaries  ; 
the  history  of  philosophy  becomes  a  series  of  anecdotes 
concerning  the  sentiments,  whims  and  practical  aims  of 
philosophers  :  the  history  of  politics,  a  tissue  of  intrigue, 
base  interests,  gossip  and  greed.  But  a  more  careful 
historian,  or  one  of  a  different  type,  will  have  nothing  to 


PROVIDENCE  7/5 

do  with  history  of  this  kind.  His  first  act  is  to  dispel 
the  mists,  to  sweep  away  the  individual  and  his  illusions, 
and  to  look  facts  in  the  face  as  they  appeared  in  their 
objective  succession  and  their  supra -individual  origin. 
Real,  true  history  arises  independently  of  individuals, 
as  a  product  growing  to  completion  behind  their  backs, 
the  product  of  a  force  apart  from  individual  agents, 
which  may  be  called  Fate,  Chance,  Fortune  or  God. 
The  individual,  who  at  first  was  everything,  and  filled 
the  whole  stage  with  his  posturing  and  declamation,  is 
now,  in  this  second  aspect  of  history,  less  than  nothing ; 
his  actions  and  cries,  stripped  of  all  serious  potency, 
provoke  laughter  or  pity.  We  look  in  terror  at  the  Fate 
that  dominates  him,  we  stand  aghast  at  the  strange 
coincidence  of  chance  or  the  caprices  of  Fortune,  we  bow 
before  the  inscrutable  designs  of  the  divine  providence. 
The  individual  appears  in  turn  as  the  inert  material,  the 
powerless  plaything  and  the  blind  instrument  of  these 
forces.  But  deeper  thought  leads  us  beyond  even  this 
second  view  of  history.  The  pity  which  the  individual 
seems  to  arouse  and  the  amusement  he  evokes  are  in 
reality  deserved  not  by  him  but  by  his  fancies,  or  rather, 
by  those  individuals  who  mistake  fancy  for  truth.  Real 
history  is  composed  of  actions,  not  of  fancies  and  illusions  : 
but  actions  are  the  work  of  individuals,  not  indeed  in  so 
far  as  they  dream,  but  in  the  inspiration  of  genius,  the 
divine  madness  of  truth,  the  holy  enthusiasm  of  the  hero. 
Fate,  Chance,  Fortune,  God — all  these  explanations  have 
the  same  defect :  they  separate  the  individual  from  his 
product,  and  instead  of  eliminating  the  capricious  element, 
the  individual  will  in  history,  as  they  claim  to  do,  they  im- 
mensely reinforce  and  increase  it.  Blind  Fate,  irresponsible 
chance,  and  tyrannical  God  are  all  alike  capricious  :  and 
hence  Fate  passes  into  Chance  and  God,  Chance  into  Fate 
and  God,  and  God  into  both  the  others,  all  three  being 
equivalent  and  identical. 


n6       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

The  idea  which  transcends  and  corrects  alike  the 
individualistic  and  supra-individualistic  views  of  history 
is  the  idea  of  history  as  rational.  History  is  made  by 
individuals  :  but  individuality  is  nothing  but  the  con- 
creteness  of  the  universal,  and  every  individual  action, 
simply  because  it  is  individual,  is  supra -individual. 
Neither  the  individual  nor  the  universal  exists  as  a 
distinct  thing  :  the  real  thing  is  the  one  single  course 
of  history,  whose  abstract  aspects  are  individuality  with- 
out universality  and  universality  without  individuality. 
This  one  course  of  history  is  coherent  in  all  its  many 
determinations,  like  a  work  of  art  which  is  at  the  same 
time  manifold  and  single,  in  which  every  word  is  insepar- 
able from  the  rest,  every  shade  of  colour  related  to  all 
the  others,  every  line  connected  with  every  other  line. 
On  this  understanding  alone  history  can  be  understood. 
Otherwise  it  must  remain  unintelligible,  like  a  string  of 
words  without  meaning  or  the  incoherent  actions  of  a 
madman. 

History  then  is  the  work  neither  of  Fate  nor  of  Chance 
but  of  the  necessity  which  is  not  determination  and  the 
liberty  which  is  not  chance.  And  since  the  religious  view, 
that  history  is  the  work  of  God,  has  this  advantage  and 
superiority  over  the  others,  that  it  introduces  a  cause  for 
history  other  than  fate  or  chance,  and  therefore  not 
properly  speaking  a  cause  at  all,  but  a  creative  activity, 
a  free  and  intelligent  mind,  it  is  natural  that  out  of 
gratitude  to  this  higher  view  no  less  than  by  the  suit- 
ability of  the  language  we  should  be  led  to  give  to  the 
rationality  of  history  the  name  of  God  who  rules  and 
governs  all  things,  and  to  call  it  the  Divine  Providence. 
In  so  naming  it,  we  at  the  same  time  purge  the  title  of  its 
mythical  dross  which  debased  God  and  his  providence 
afresh  into  a  fate  or  a  chance.  Thus  providence  in 
history,  in  this  final  logical  form,  has  double  value  as  a 
criticism  of  individual  illusions,  when  they  come  forward 


PROVIDENCE  117 

as  the  entire  and  only  reality  of  history,  and  as  a  criticism 
of  divine  transcendence.  And  we  may  say  that  this  is 
the  point  of  view  which  always  has  been  and  always  is 
adopted,  as  if  instinctively,  without  the  profession  of 
an  explicit  theory,  by  all  minds  naturally  gifted  with 
that  particular  faculty  which  we  call  the  historic 
sense. 

If  now,  to  return  to  Vico,  we  ask  how  he  solved  the 
problem  of  the  motive  force  of  history,  and  what  was  the 
precise  content  for  him  of  the  concept  of  providence  in 
the  objective  sense,  it  is  perfectly  easy  to  exclude  the 
supposition  that  his  was  the  transcendent  or  miraculous 
Providence  which  had  formed  the  subject  of  Bossuet's 
eloquent  Discours.  It  is  easy  both  because  in  all  his 
philosophy  he  invariably  reduces  the  transcendent  to 
the  immanent,  and  repeats  over  and  over  again  here 
that  his  providence  operates  by  natural  means  or  (using 
scholastic  phraseology)  by  secondary  causes  :  and  be- 
cause upon  this  point  his  interpreters  are  practically 
unanimous. 

No  less  insistent  is  his  criticism  of  fate  and  chance, 
or  according  to  his  threefold  division  fortune,  fate  and 
chance.  He  observes  that  the  doctrine  of  fate  moves  in 
a  vicious  circle,  because  the  eternal  series  of  causes  in 
which  it  holds  the  world  bound  and  chained,  depends 
upon  the  will  of  Jupiter,  and  at  the  same  time  Jupiter 
is  subject  to  fate ;  whence  it  results  that  the  Stoics  are 
themselves  entangled  in  that  "  chain  of  Jupiter  "  with 
which  they  would  imprison  all  things  human.  These 
three  concepts,  corresponding  to  that  of  opportunity 
when  an  object  of  desire  is  in  question,  to  that  of  good  luck 
in  the  case  of  unhoped-for  events,  and  to  that  of  accident 
in  the  case  of  the  unexpected,  are  distinctions  of  the  sub- 
jective understanding  rather  than  anything  else :  object- 
ively they  come  under  one  single  law  which  may  also 
be  called  fortune,  if  with  Plato  we  recognise  opportunity 


if 8      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

as  the  mistress  of  human  affairs  :  and  all  three  are 
manifestations  and  paths  of  the  divine  Providence  which 
is  intelligence,  liberty  and  necessity.  The  creator  of 
the  world  of  nations  "  was  indeed  Mind,  since  men  made 
it  by  their  intelligence  :  it  was  not  Fate,  because  they 
made  it  by  free  choice,  nor  yet  Chance,  since  to  all 
eternity  on  doing  thus  the  same  results  follow." 

Vico  lights  up  in  the  most  fanciful  ways  the  comedy 
of  errors  formed  by  man's  illusions  as  to  the  end  of  his 
own  actions.  Men  thought  they  were  escaping  the  threats 
of  the  thundering  sky  by  carrying  their  women  into  caves 
to  satisfy  their  animal  passions  out  of  God's  sight :  and 
by  thus  keeping  them  safely  secluded  they  founded  the 
first  chaste  unions  and  the  first  societies ;  marriage  and 
the  family.  They  fortified  themselves  in  suitable  places 
with  the  intention  of  defending  themselves  and  their 
families  :  and  in  reality,  by  thus  fortifying  themselves 
in  fixed  places  they  put  an  end  to  their  nomadic  life 
and  primitive  wanderings,  and  began  to  learn  agriculture. 
The  weak  and  disorderly,  reduced  to  the  extremity  of 
hunger  and  mutual  slaughter,  to  save  their  lives  took 
refuge  in  these  fortified  places,  and  became  servants  to 
the  heroes  :  and  thus  without  knowing  it  they  raised 
the  family  to  an  aristocratic  or  feudal  status.  The 
aristocrats,  feudal  chiefs  or  patricians,  their  rule  once 
established,  hoped  to  defend  and  secure  it  by  the  strictest 
treatment  of  their  servants  the  plebeians  :  but  in  this 
way  they  awoke  in  the  servants  a  consciousness  of  their 
own  power  and  made  the  plebeians  into  men,  and  the 
more  the  patricians  prided  themselves  on  their  patriciate 
and  struggled  to  preserve  it,  the  more  effectively  they 
worked  to  destroy  the  patrician  state  and  to  create 
democracy.  Thus,  says  Vico,  the  world  of  nations  issues 
"  from  a  mind  widely  different  from,  sometimes  quite 
opposed,  always  superior,  to  the  particular  ends  set  before 
themselves  by  men  :  which  restricted  ends  have  been 


PROVIDENCE  ug 

made  means  to  wider  ends,  and  employed  to  preserve  the 
human  race  upon  this  earth." 

It  may  be  gathered  from  some  of  our  quotations  from 
Vico  that  he  sometimes  tended  to  conceive  men  as  con- 
scious of  their  own  utilitarian  ends  but  unconscious  of 
moral  ends.  This  would  logically  lead  to  explaining 
social  life  on  exclusively  utilitarian  principles,  and  to 
considering  morality  as  an  accident  relatively  to  the 
human  will  and  therefore  not  really  moral :  an  external 
accretion  more  or  less  capable  of  holding  mankind  together, 
or  the  obscure  work  of  a  »supramundane  providence. 
This  utilitarianism  especially  creeps  into  a  passage  where 
he  says  that  man,  on  account  of  his  corrupt  nature,  being 
under  the  tyranny  of  self-love  which  compels  him  to  make 
private  utility  his  chief  guide  and  to  want  every  useful 
thing  for  himself  and  nothing  for  his  fellow,  unable  to 
hold  his  passions  in  check  so  as  to  direct  them  by  justice, 
in  the  state  of  nature  desires  only  his  own  safety ;  after 
taking  a  wife  and  begetting  children,  desires  his  safety 
and  the  safety  of  his  family ;  after  attaining  civil  life, 
desires  his  own  safety  together  with  the  safety  of  his  city  ; 
after  extending  his  rule  over  other  peoples,  he  desires 
the  safety  of  the  nation  ;  after  joining  with  other  nations 
in  wars,  treaties,  alliances  and  commerce,  he  desires  his 
safety  and  that  of  all  mankind  :  and  "  in  all  these  circum- 
stances he  principally  desires  his  own  interest."  For 
this  reason  "  it  can  be  nothing  else  than  divine  providence 
that  binds  him  down  within  such  ordinances  as  to  main- 
tain by  justice  the  society  of  the  family,  the  state  and 
ultimately  of  mankind  ;  by  which  ordinances  since  man 
cannot  attain  what  he  wants,  at  least  he  wants  to  attain 
as  much  utility  as  is  permitted  :  and  this  is  what  is  called 
justice."  The  public  virtue  of  Rome,  he  writes  else- 
where, "  was  nothing  but  a  good  use  made  by  providence 
of  grave,  unsightly  and  cruel  private  faults,  that  states 
might  be  preserved  at  a  time  when  human  minds,  being 


120      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

in  a  state  of  extreme  particularity,  could  not  naturally 
understand  a  common  good." 

Utilitarianism  was  however,  as  we  know,  strongly 
repugnant  to  Vico's  observed  ethics,  founded  as  the  latter 
is  upon  the  moral  consciousness  or  shame ;  and  hence 
these  statements,  which  unconsciously  tend  in  that 
direction,  can  only  be  explained  as  resulting  from  the 
disturbance  sometimes  produced  in  his  mind  by  the 
lingering  remains  of  the  transcendent  or  theological 
conception  of  providence,  and  also  from  the  confused 
character  of  his  thought,  which  prevented  him  from  keep- 
ing the  idea  of  individual  illusions  clearly  distinguished 
from  that  of  individual  aims ;  so  that  he  sometimes 
substituted  the  second  when  he  ought  to  have  been 
dealing  solely  with  the  first.  If  the  provident  deity  is 
"  the  unity  of  the  spirit  which  informs  and  animates 
the  world  of  nations,"  these  do  not  fail  to  obtain  their 
particular  ends  in  order  that  it  may  move  on  to  its  universal 
ones,  but  both  alike  are  realised  in  them  :  and  man  is  at 
every  moment  both  utilitarian  and  moral,  or  at  least 
supposes  himself  to  be  moral  when  he  is  utilitarian  or 
utilitarian  when  he  is  really  moral. 

In  any  case,  and  in  spite  of  these  vacillations  or  rather 
confusions,  the  conception  of  particular  ends  as  the  vehicle 
of  universal  and  of  illusion  as  accompanying  and  co- 
operating with  action  implies  a  dialectical  conception 
of  the  movement  of  history,  and  the  transcending  of  the 
problem  of  evil.  This  problem  is  in  fact  very  little 
emphasised  by  Vico,  owing  to  the  strength  of  his  belief 
in  the  universal  government  of  providence  and  of  his 
persuasion  that  so-called  evil  is  not  only  willed  by  man 
under  the  appearance  of  good,  but  is  itself  essentially  a 
good.  In  a  few  rare  passages  in  his  earliest  writings, 
where  he  encounters  the  problem  of  evil,  Vico  solves  it 
simply  in  the  sense  that  we  men  because  of  our  iniquity 
which  leads  us  to  "  regard  ourselves,  not  this  universe 


PROVIDENCE  121 

of  things  "  (nosmetipsos,  non  hanc  rerum  universitatem 
spectamus)  consider  as  evil  those  things  which  run  counter 
to  us,  "  which  yet,  since  they  contribute  to  the  common 
nature  of  the  world,  are  good  "  (quae  tamen,  quia  in 
mundi  commune  conferunt,  bona  sunt). 

Vico's  conception  of  history  thus  became  truly  object- 
ive, freed  from  divine  arbitrament,  but  freed  equally 
from  the  rule  of  trifling  causes  and  gossiping  explanations, 
and  acquiring  a  knowledge  of  its  own  essential  end, 
which  is  to  understand  the  nexus  of  facts,  the  logic  of 
events ;  to  be  the  rational  reconstruction  of  a  rational 
fact.  Historical  study  at  this  time  suffered  less  from  the 
first  of  these  errors  (the  theological  conception  had  been 
ever  since  the  beginning  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  falling 
into  universal  decay)  than  from  that  form  of  history 
which  was  just  then  acquiring  the  name  of  "  pragmatic," 
which  restricted  itself  to  the  personal  aspect  of  events, 
and  failing  by  these  means  to  reach  full  historical  truth 
tried  to  gain  warmth  and  life  by  means  of  political  and 
moral  instruction.  A  monument  of  pragmatic  history 
arose  in  Vico's  own  country  and  contemporaneously 
with  the  Scienza  Nuova  :  Pietro  Giannone's  Civil  History 
of  the  Kingdom  of  Naples.  The  author  was  a  man  of  his 
own  district  and  age,  and  wrote  a  great  work  in  the  sphere 
of  polemic,  and  even  in  certain  respects  of  history  :  but 
such  that  all  its  greatness  only  serves  to  emphasise  the 
greatness  of  Vico's  book.  If  Vico  had  had  to  describe 
the  origins  of  ecclesiastical  property  and  power  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  he  would  have  been  able  to  write  of  some- 
thing very  different  from  the  guile  of  popes,  bishops  and 
abbots,  and  the  simplicity  of  dukes  and  emperors.  And 
as  we  shall  see,  whenever  he  undertook  to  investigate  any 
part  of  history  he  actually  did  discover  in  it  something 
very  different  from  these  things. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  LAW  OF  REFLUX 

THE  mind,  after  traversing  its  course  of  progress,  after 
rising  from  sensation  successively  to  the  imaginative  and 
the  rational  universal  and  from  violence  to  equity,  is 
bound  in  conformity  with  its  eternal  nature  to  re-traverse 
the  course,  to  relapse  into  violence  and  sensation,  and 
thence  to  renew  its  upward  movement,  to  commence  a 
reflux. 

This  is  the  philosophical  meaning  of  Vico's  "  reflux," 
but  not  the  exact  manner  in  which  we  find  it  expressed 
in  his  writings,  where  the  eternal  circle  is  considered 
almost  exclusively  as  exemplified  in  the  history  of  nations, 
as  a  reflux  in  the  civil  affairs  of  man.\  Civilisation  comes 
to  an  end  in  the  "  barbarism  of  reflection,"  which  is  worse 
than  the  primitive  barbarism  of  sensation  ;  for  while  the 
latter  was  not  without  a  wild  nobility,  the  former  is  con- 
temptible, untrustworthy  and  treacherous  ;  and  thus  it 
is  necessary  that  this  evil  subtlety  of  malicious  intellect 
should  rust  away  through  the  long  centuries  of  a  new 
barbarism  of  sensation.  We  must  however  withdraw 
and  purge  the  conception  of  "  reflux  "  from  historical 
facts  and  the  sociological  scheme,  not  only  to  explain 
the  absolute  and  eternal  character  which  Vico  attributes 
to  it,  but  also  to  justify  the  historical  representation  and 
sociological  law  founded  upon  it,  and  drawing  their 
cogency  primarily  from  it. 

122 


THE  LAW  OF  REFLUX  123 

The  laws  of  flux  and  reflux,  laid  down  by  the  philo- 
sophers and  politicians  of  Greece  and  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance,  were  founded  no  less  than  Vico's  upon  a 
philosophy,  but  upon  a  very  superficial  one  ;  they  assumed 
their  object  to  possess  external  and  empty  political  forms, 
and  endeavoured  to  fix  the  succession  of  these  forms 
upon  data  of  experience  or  by  vague  reasonings.  But 
Vico's  object  is  the  forms  of  culture,  including  in  them- 
selves all  the  activities  of  life,  economy  and  law,  religion 
and  art,  science  and  language,  and  referring  them  back 
to  their  inmost  source,  the  human  mind,  he  establishes 
their  succession  "  according  to  the  rhythm  of  the  element- 
ary forms  of  the  mind."  Thus  all  the  learning  which  has 
been  expended  in  comparing  the  Vician  reflux  with  the 
theories  of  Plato  or  Polybius,  Machiavelli  or  Campanella, 
is  practically  wasted  :  the  more  so  that  Vico  (who,  as  we 
know,  though  often  misunderstanding  his  predecessors 
cannot  be  accused  of  wishing  to  pass  them  over  :  in  fact, 
where  he  thought  he  found  parallel  or  identical  ideas  in 
them,  he  was  apt  to  boast  of  the  fact)  felt  no  need  of 
mentioning  this  point,  or  thought  it  unimportant.  The 
"  circular  movement "  (dvaKv/cAwons)  of  Polybius,  the 
economy  of  nature  by  which  states  alter,  change  and 
return  to  the  same  point,  has  been  thought  almost  an 
anticipation  of  the  eternal  ideal  history ;  but  Vico  sets 
Polybius  with  the  others,  when  he  asks  the  reader  to 
consider  "  how  (little)  philosophers  have  thought  with 
knowledge  upon  their  principles  of  civil  government,  and 
with  what  (little)  truth  Polybius  has  reasoned  upon  its 
changes."  Campanella  connected  his  historical  cycles 
with  astrological  laws  ;  and  Machiavelli  conceives  the 
catastrophe  which  opens  the  reflux  thus  :  "  When  human 
craft  and  malignity  have  gone  as  far  as  they  can  go,  it 
happens  of  necessity  that  the  world  purifies  itself  by  one 
of  the  three  methods  (pestilence,  famine  and  deluge, 
beside  the  human  methods  of  new  religions  and  languages) 


124      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

in  order  that  men,  having  become  few  and  chastened, 
may  live  more  conveniently  and  become  better."  The 
one  precedent  to  which  Vico  refers,  but  only  to  interpret 
it  in  a  way  altogether  his  own  and  in  fact  to  give  it  a 
totally  new  content,  is  the  ancient  Egyptian  tradition  of 
the  three  successive  ages  of  gods,  heroes  and  men. 

If  the  philosophy  lying  at  its  root  gives  strength  to 
Vico's  sociological  theory  of  reflux,  the  historical  element 
with  which  it  is  leavened  to  some  degree  weakens  it. 
Vico  was  especially  versed  in  and  attached  to  Roman 
history,  which  had  been  the  first  of  his  historical  studies 
and  the  object  of  many  years'  devotion.  The  history  of 
Rome  accordingly,  whether  because  of  his  deeper  study 
of  it  or  because  of  its  complexity,  impressiveness  and  long 
duration,  came  to  stand  in  Vico's  mind  as  the  typical  or 
normal  history,  to  serve  as  a  standard  for  all  others,  and 
be  confused  with  the  law  of  flux  and  reflux  itself.  Rome 
showed  him  the  asylum  of  Romulus,  that  is,  the  transi- 
tion from  the  state  of  nature  to  the  political  organism  : 
aristocracies,  monarchical  at  first  in  appearance  only, 
later  not  even  in  appearance  :  democracy,  issuing  from 
its  struggle  with  aristocracy  and  ending  in  real  monarchy, 
the  perfect  form  of  civil  life ;  thence  by  a  process  of 
degeneration,  the  barbarism  of  reflection  or  civilisation, 
incomparably  worse  than  the  primitive  noble  barbarism, 
and  following  in  its  train  a  second  condition  of  wandering 
in  a  state  of  nature  and  a  new  barbarism,  a  new  youth, 
the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  the  history  of  Rome  hardly 
generalised  at  all  and  supplemented  here  and  there  by 
that  of  Greece,  that  appears  in  the  Vician  aphorisms 
formulating  the  laws  of  social  dynamics.  Men  first  feel 
the  prick  of  necessity,  then  the  attraction  of  utility: 
next  they  become  aware  of  convenience,  and  after  that 
take  delight  in  pleasure  ;  then  dissipate  themselves  in 
luxury  and  finally  fall  victims  to  the  madness  of  abusing 
their  resources.  There  must  at  first  be  men  of  brute 


THE  LA  W  OF  REFLUX  125 

strength  like  Polyphemus,  that  man  may  obey  man  in 
the  state  of  family  life,  and  to  induce  him  to  obey  the  law 
in  the  future  state  of  civil  life.  There  must  be  noble  and 
proud  men  like  Achilles,  not  inclined  by  nature  to  yield 
to  their  equals,  in  order  to  establish  over  the  family  the 
aristocratic  type  of  republic.  Then  valiant  and  just  men 
like  Aristides  and  Scipio  Africanus  are  necessary,  to  open 
the  path  to  popular  liberty.  After  this  arise  men  of  great 
apparent  virtues  accompanied  by  faults  no  less  great,  like 
Alexander  or  Caesar,  acquiring  immense  popular  reputa- 
tions and  introducing  monarchy.  Later  still  there  must 
be  serious  reflective  natures  like  Tiberius  to  consolidate 
the  monarchy;  and  lastly  wild,  dissolute  and  shameless 
characters  like  Caligula,  Nero  and  Domitian  to  over- 
throw it. 

Owing  to  this  rarefaction  of  Roman  history  into  typical 
history,  and  the  simultaneous  consolidation  of  typical 
history  into  the  history  of  Rome,  Vico's  law  of  reflux  is 
riddled  with  exceptions,  much  more  common  and  serious 
than  those  of  the  corresponding  empirical  laws ;  so  that 
if  as  he  believes  his  empirical  science  is  identical  with  the 
ideal  laws  of  the  mind,  its  alleged  permanency  throughout 
all  eternity  and  the  whole  universe  seems  the  merest  irony. 
He  says  that  Carthage,  Capua  and  Numantia,  the  three 
cities  which  threatened  to  dispute  with  Rome  the  empire 
of  the  world,  failed  to  accomplish  the  ordained  course  of 
human  affairs  :  since  the  Carthaginians  were  thwarted 
by  the  acuteness  of  the  native  African  temperament, 
which  by  maritime  commerce  they  increased  still  further  : 
the  Capuans  by  the  soft  climate  and  fertility  of  rich 
Campania  :  and  the  Numantines  by  their  suppression  in 
the  first  burst  of  heroism  at  the  hands  of  Rome,  led  by 
Scipio  Africanus  the  conqueror  of  Carthage,  and  aided  by 
the  forces  of  the  world.  And  passing  from  ancient  to 
modern  times,  America  would  now  be  traversing  the  path 
of  human  affairs  but  for  its  discovery  by  Europeans  : 


126      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

Poland  and  England  are  still  aristocratic,  but  would  have 
arrived  at  perfect  monarchy  had  not  the  natural  course 
of  civil  affairs  been  hindered  by  extraordinary  causes. 
As  for  the  Middle  Ages,  they  cannot  be  considered  as  in 
Vico's  estimation  a  true  return  to  the  state  of  nature,  if 
they  open  with  the  establishment  of  Christianity,  the 
religion  of  the  true  God  ;  nor  in  any  case  does  the  return 
to  the  state  of  nature  and  to  barbarism  seem  the  only 
path  open  to  a  nation  that  has  attained  its  a/cp?,  its 
culmination.  The  alternative  is  that  a  decadent  nation 
should  lose  its  independence  and  fall  under  the  rule  of  a 
better.  Nor,  lastly,  is  decadence  inevitable  if  statesmen 
and  philosophers  working  in  harmony  can  preserve  the 
perfection  that  has  been  reached  and  check  the  threatened 
destruction,  and  if  in  point  of  fact,  as  he  observes,  the 
aristocratic  republics  which  survived  his  own  day  as 
remnants  of  the  Middle  Ages  succeeded  in  preserving 
themselves  by  arts  of  "  superfine  wisdom."  His  own  time 
Vico  thought  to  be  one  of  high  civilisation.  A  complete 
humanity,  he  says,  seems  to  be  scattered  to-day  over  all 
nations.  A  few  great  monarchs  rule  the  world  of  nations, 
and  those  barbarian  monarchs  who  still  exist  do  so  either 
owing  to  the  persistence  of  the  "  common  wisdom  "  of 
imaginative  and  cruel  religions,  or  because  of  the  natural 
temperaments  of  their  respective  peoples.  The  nations 
which  form  the  empire  of  the  Czar  of  Russia  are  of  a 
sluggish  disposition  ;  those  of  the  Khan  of  Tartary  are 
an  effeminate  race  ;  the  subjects  of  the  Negus  of  Ethiopia 
and  the  King  of  Fez  and  of  Morocco  are  few  and  weak. 
In  the  temperate  zone  Japan  maintains  a  heroic  character 
not  unlike  that  of  Rome  in  the  period  of  the  Punic  wars  ; 
her  people  are  warlike,  her  language  resembling  Latin, 
her  religion  a  fierce  one  of  terrible  gods  all  loaded  with 
formidable  weapons.  The  Chinese  on  the  other  hand, 
whose  religion  is  mild,  cultivate  literature  and  are  humane 
in  the  highest  degree  :  the  peoples  of  the  Indies  are  also 


THE  LA  W  OF  REFLUX  127 

humane  and  practise  the  arts  of  peace  ;   the  Persians  and 
Turks  mingle  the  rude  doctrine  of  their  religion  with  an 
Asiatic  softness,  the  Turks  especially  tempering  their  arro- 
gance with  pomp,  magnificence,  liberality  and  gratitude. 
Europe  is  above  all  humane,  composed  as  it  is  of  great 
monarchies  and  universally  professing  the  Christian  faith 
which  inculcates  an  infinitely  pure  and  perfect  idea  of 
God  and  commands  charity  to  the  whole  human  race. 
Vico  fixed  his  attention  upon  the  confederacy  of  the 
Swiss  cantons  and  the  united  provinces  of  Holland,  which 
reminded  him  of  the  Aetolian  and  Achaean  leagues,  and 
on  the  composition  of  the  German  Empire,  a  system  of 
free  states  and  sovereign  princes,  which  seemed  to  him  a 
kind  of  attempt  in  the  direction  of  a  great  aristocratic 
state ;   the  most  perfect  of  all,  and  the  ultimate  form  of 
civil  life,  since  no  other  can  be  conceived  superior  to  it, 
reproducing  as  it  does  the  earliest  form,  the  aristocracy 
of  patricians  each  supreme  in  his  own  family  and  all  united 
in  the  ruling  class  of  the  first  state ;    but  reproducing 
it  in  a  form  not  of  barbarism  but  of  the  highest  civilisa- 
tion.    Such  is  the  humanity  by  which  Europe  is  on  every 
hand  distinguished,  that  it  abounds  with  every  element 
contributory  to  human  happiness,  mental  pleasures  no 
less  than  bodily  comforts,  and  all  this  in  virtue  of  the 
Christian  religion,   teaching  as  it  does  sublime  truths, 
supported  by  the  most  learned  philosophers  of  the  Gentile 
races  and  of  the  three  greatest  languages  of  the  world, 
Hebrew,  Greek  and  Latin,  and  thus  uniting  the  wisdom  of 
authority  with  that  of  reason,  the  choicest  philosophical 
doctrine   with    the    most  highly  developed  philological 
learning.     Can  this  lofty  civilisation,  safeguarded  as  it 
is  by  Christianity,  be  moving,  or  ever  likely  to  move 
towards  a  new  state  of  nature  ?     It  is  difficult  to  discover 
Vico's  real   opinion   on  this  point.     Among  his  verses 
there  is  a  poem  of  a  profoundly  pessimistic  tone,  but  this 
is  a  youthful  effusion,  and  in  any  case  refers  to  the  end  of 


128      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

the  world  as  imminent,  rather  than  to  a  future  social 
decadence.  In  his  letters  there  is  a  melancholy  picture 
of  the  condition  of  learning  in  his  time :  but  it  applies  to 
this  restricted  field  only,  not  to  the  sphere  of  social  and 
political  life.  On  the  other  hand,  in  his  last  philosophical 
work,  the  De  mente  heroica,  referring  to  those  who  declared 
that  all  things  were  now  perfect  and  that  no  new  tasks 
could  arise,  he  says  that  the  tide  of  progress  is  flowing  at 
its  strongest.  "  The  world  is  still  young :  for  only  in 
the  last  seven  hundred  years,  four  hundred  of  which  were 
spent  in  barbarism,  how  many  new  discoveries  have  been 
made !  How  many  new  arts  have  arisen !  How  many 
new  sciences  have  been  developed  !  "  (Mundus  iuvenescit 
adhuc  ;  nam  septingentis  non  ultra  abhinc  annis,  quorum 
tamen  quadringentos  barbaries  percurrit,  quot  nova  inventa  ! 
quot  novae  artes  /  quot  novae  scientiae  excogitatae  /)  But 
we  may  observe  that  the  De  mente  heroica  is  an  official 
oration,  and  that  Vico  may  on  that  account  have  suppressed 
for  the  occasion  his  doubts  or  his  deepest  convictions. 
In  any  case,  how  can  we  reconcile  the  prophecy  of  an 
imminent  collapse  with  the  rise  of  that  creation  of  provi- 
dence, the  New  Science,  shedding  upon  the  life  of  nations 
a  light  which  rendered  possible  the  diagnosis  and  cure  of 
their  ailments  ?  On  the  whole  it  is  probable  that  the 
difficulty  of  determining  Vico's  opinion  as  to  the  fate  of 
contemporary  society  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  really 
no  settled  conviction  on  the  subject,  and  was  led  hither 
and  thither  in  various  and  contrary  directions  by  the 
influence  of  hopes  and  fears. 

If  it  had  not  been  disturbed  by  the  scheme  of  Roman 
history,  the  empirical  theory  of  the  reflux  would  never 
have  been  forced  to  admit  so  many  and  serious  exceptions; 
nor  would  it  have  fallen  into  such  painful  confusions.  It 
would  have  accommodated  its  author's  historical  observa- 
tions with  greater  ease,  and  its  general  characteristics 
would  have  been  much  simpler  and  more  general.  It 


THE  LA  W  OF  REFLUX  129 

would  have  consisted  primarily  in  the  determination  and 
illustration  of  the  connexion  between  predominantly 
imaginative  and  predominantly  intellectual,  spontaneous 
and  reflective,  periods,  the  latter  periods  issuing  out  of 
the  former  by  an  increase  of  energy,  and  returning  to  them 
by  degeneration  and  decomposition.  Political  history 
shows  over  and  over  again  the  spectacle  of  aristocracies 
declining  from  their  first  strength  to  a  debased  and  con- 
temptible state  and  yielding  before  the  onset  of  classes 
less  refined  or  even  absolutely  uncultured,  but  of  stouter 
moral  fibre  ;  while  these  again,  after  becoming  civilised 
in  their  turn  and  attaining  the  highest  development  of  the 
historical  idea  whose  germ  they  bear  within  themselves, 
enter  upon  a  new  period  of  decay  and  fermentation, 
from  which  issues  a  new  ruling  class  in  the  vigour  of  a 
youthful  barbarism.  The  history  of  philosophy  again 
shows  positive  and  speculative  periods ;  philosophical 
solutions  congeal  into  scholastic  theory  and  dogma,  the 
mind  reverts  to  the  mere  unthinking  observation  of 
particular  fact,  and  the  speculative  process  arises  once 
more.  Literary  history,  too,  speaks  of  periods  of  realism 
and  idealism,  romantic  and  classical  periods  :  of  a  corrupt 
classicism,  Alexandrian  or  decadent  art,  and  of  a  romantic 
barbarism  which  arises  from  it.  These  are  true  cases  of 
Vice's  reflux.  But  since  the  nature  of  the  mind  which 
underlies  these  cycles  is  outside  time  and  therefore  exists 
in  every  moment  of  time,  we  must  not  exaggerate  the 
difference  of  the  periods  :  and  if  on  the  one  hand  the  out- 
line of  the  law  must  be  distinct,  it  must  on  the  other 
hand  not  lose  a  certain  elasticity.  We  must  never  forget 
that  at  every  period,  aristocratic  or  democratic,  romantic 
or  classical,  positive  or  speculative,  and  even  in  every 
individual  and  every  fact,  moments  both  aristocratic  and 
democratic,  romantic  and  classical,  positive  and  speculative 
can  be  observed  ;  and  that  these  distinctions  are  to  a 
great  extent  quantitative  and  made  for  the  sake  of 

K 


130      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

convenience.  These  facts  should  lead  us  to  avoid  alike 
maintaining  the  law  at  all  costs  and  so  falling  into 
artificiality,  and  rejecting  it  entirely  and  so  refusing  the 
help  which  may  be  derived  from  general  and  approxi- 
mative views. 

Thus  understood  and  amended,  not  only  is  the  theory 
free  from  the  great  and  striking  exceptions  which  are 
necessary  when  it  is  modelled  upon  the  history  and  final 
catastrophe  of  Rome,  but  the  accusations  of  undue  uni- 
formity lodged  against  Vico  disappear.  Vincenzo  Cuoco, 
one  of  the  first,  if  not  the  first  intelligent  student  of  Vice's 
works,  remarks  concerning  and  in  criticism  of  the  law  of 
reflux,  that  "  nature  never  resembles  itself ;  it  is  man  who 
by  compounding  his  observations  forms  classes  and  names." 
This  is  perfectly  true  ;  but  if  applied  to  this  case  it  would 
be  an  argument  not  against  the  Vician  reflux  but  against 
every  sort  of  empirical  human  science.  Others  accused 
Vico  of  overlooking  groups  of  causes  of  great  historical 
weight,  such  as  climate,  racial  and  national  character,  and 
exceptional  occurrences.  But,  omitting  the  fact  that  he 
often  mentions  these  things,  for  he  connects  national 
character  and  climate  with  the  forms  and  changes  of  states, 
and  mentions  events  and  circumstances  which  upset  the 
natural  and  ordinary  course  of  national  history,  for 
example  in  his  discussion  of  Greek  history,  the  truth  is 
that  he  was  bound  to  ignore  them  and  could  not  waste 
time  over  such  things,  since  his  concern  was  with  uni- 
formities and  not  with  divergences,  or  rather  with  certain 
uniformities  and  not  with  certain  others  which  compared 
with  the  former  were  negligible  divergences.  Similarly — 
the  parallel  is  an  obvious  one,  and  indeed  is  more  than 
a  parallel — any  one  who  attempts  to  trace  the  general 
characteristics  of  the  different  periods  of  life,  infancy, 
childhood,  adolescence  and  so  forth,  will  ignore  the  com- 
parative rapidity  and  slowness  of  development  due  to 
differences  of  climate,  race  or  accidental  circumstances. 


THE  LA  W  OF  REFLUX  131 

Another  of  these  true  but  irrelevant  charges  is  that  Vico 
denied  the  communication  and  interpenetration  of  civili- 
sations, and  insisted  that  they  arise  separately  in  different 
nations  without  any  mutual  knowledge  and  therefore 
without  reciprocal  imitation.  This  charge  has  been  met 
by  the  observation  that  Vico  does  not  fail  to  record 
cases  of  the  influence  of  one  people  upon  another  and 
of  the  transmission  of  civilisations  and  their  products; 
the  transmission  for  example  of  alphabetic  writing 
from  the  Chaldaeans  to  the  Phoenicians  and  from  them 
to  the  Egyptians ;  and  that  in  any  case  his  law  is  not 
empirical  but  philosophical  and  refers  to  the  spontaneous 
creative  activity  of  the  human  mind.  The  point  at  issue 
is  however  precisely  the  empirical  aspect  of  this  law,  not 
the  philosophical :  and  the  true  reply  seems  to  us  to  be, 
as  we  have  already  suggested,  that  Vico  could  not  take 
and  ought  not  to  have  taken  other  circumstances  into 
account,  just  as — to  recall  one  instance — any  one  who  in 
studying  the  various  phases  of  life  describes  the  first 
manifestations  of  the  sexual  craving  in  the  vague 
imaginations  and  similar  phenomena  of  puberty,  does  not 
take  into  account  the  ways  in  which  the  less  experienced 
may  be  initiated  into  love  by  the  more  experienced,  since 
he  is  setting  out  to  deal  not  with  the  social  laws  of  imitation 
but  with  the  physiological  laws  of  organic  development. 
If  it  is  said  that  even  without  imitation  or  sophistication 
the  sexual  craving  arises  no  less  and  demands  satisfaction, 
such  a  statement  doubtless  merely  asserts  the  incon- 
trovertible truth  of  a  certain  very  ancient  Eastern 
tale  included  by  Boccaccio  in  the  Decameron :  but 
at  the  same  time  it  supplies  the  most  complete  parallel 
to  the  famous  and  much  controverted  aphorism  of 
Vico. 

Nor  is  the  Vician  law  of  reflux  necessarily  opposed,  as 
has  often  been  thought,  to  the  conception  of  social  progress. 
It  would  be  so  opposed  if  instead  of  being  a  law  of  mere 


132      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

uniformity  it  were  one  of  identity,  in  agreement  with  the 
idea  of  an  unending  cyclical  repetition  of  single  individual 
facts  which  has  been  adopted  by  certain  extravagant  minds 
of  both  ancient  and  modern  times.  The  reflux  of  history, 
the  eternal  cycle  of  the  mind,  can  and  must  be  conceived, 
even  if  Vico  does  not  so  express  it,  as  not  merely  diverse 
in  its  uniform  movements,  but  as  perpetually  increasing 
in  richness  and  outgrowing  itself,  so  that  the  new  period 
of  sense  is  in  reality  enriched  by  all  the  intellect  and  all 
the  development  that  preceded  it,  and  the  same  is  true  of 
the  new  period  of  the  imagination  or  of  the  developed 
mind.  The  return  of  barbarism  in  the  Middle  Ages  was 
in  some  respects  uniform  with  ancient  barbarism ;  but 
it  must  not  for  that  reason  be  considered  as  identical  with 
it,  since  it  contains  in  itself  Christianity,  which  summarises 
and  transcends  ancient  thought. 

Whether  the  conception  of  progress  is  formulated  and 
thrown  into  relief  by  Vico  is  quite  another  question. 
Vico  does  not  deny  progress  ;  he  even  refers  to  it  in 
speaking  of  the  conditions  of  his  own  time  as  an  actual 
fact :  but  he  has  no  conception  of  it  and  still  less  does 
he  throw  such  a  conception  into  relief.  His  philosophy, 
while  it  attains  the  lofty  vision  of  the  process  of  mind  in 
obedience  to  its  own  laws,  nevertheless  retains  by  reason 
of  this  failure  to  apprehend  the  progressive  enrichment 
of  reality  an  element  of  sadness  and  desolation.  The 
individual  character  of  men  and  events  is  obliterated  in 
Vico  ;  individuals  and  events  are  represented  merely  as 
particular  cases  of  one  aspect  of  the  mind  or  of  one  phase 
of  civilisation.  Hence  we  always  find  Aristides  along- 
side of  Scipio  and  Alexander  alongside  of  Caesar :  never 
Aristides  simply  as  Aristides,  Scipio  as  Scipio,  and  Alex- 
ander and  Caesar  as  Alexander  and  as  Caesar.  Progress 
implies  that  each  fact  and  each  individual  has  its  own 
unique  function  ;  each  makes  its  own  contribution,  for 
which  no  other  can  be  substituted,  to  the  poem  of  history  ; 


THE  LA  W  OF  REFLUX  133 

and  each  responds  with  a  deeper  voice  to  the  one  that 
went  before. 

But  the  reason  why  Vico  was  bound  to  miss  the  idea 
of  progress  and  why  his  studies  in  history  were  inevitably 
one-sided  can  be  clearly  perceived  only  after  a  review  of 
his  metaphysics. 


CHAPTER  XII 


BY  "  metaphysics "  we  understand  Vice's  conception 
of  reality  as  a  whole,  not  of  the  world  of  man  by  itself ; 
and  we  also  include  in  the  meaning  of  the  word  his  ultimate 
negative  conclusion  asserting  the  unknowability  or  the 
imperfect  knowability  of  one  or  more  spheres  of  reality, 
or  of  that  highest  sphere  in  which  the  others  reunite. 

In  point  of  fact,  as  we  observed  in  considering  the 
second  and  latest  form  of  his  theory  of  knowledge,  Vico 
drew  a  sharp  line  between  the  world  of  man  and  the  world 
of  nature  :  the  former  transparent  to  man  because  created 
by  him,  the  latter  opaque,  because  only  God  its  Creator  has 
knowledge  of  it.  And  his  conception  of  the  total  and 
ultimate  reality,  the  metaphysic  which  he  expounds  to- 
gether with  his  earlier  theory  of  knowledge,  retains  the 
value  granted  to  it  by  that  theory  and  no  other  :  it  is  a 
probable  conjecture,  but  one  incapable  of  verification, 
and  reaches  completion  in  the  certitude  of  revealed  theo- 
logy. Hence  this  metaphysic  remains  out  of  all  possible 
connexion  with  the  New  Science,  which  proceeds  by  the 
certain  method  of  truth  and  cuts  itself  off  from  revelation. 
Vico  never  rejected  it.  He  discusses  it  in  his  auto- 
biography of  1725,  the  year  of  the  first  Scienza  Nuova  ; 
he  refers  to  it  with  satisfaction  in  1737,  seven  years  after 
the  second  Scienza  Nuova,  when  his  scientific  life  was,  as 
he  himself  considered,  at  an  end.  But  though  he  never 

134 


METAPHYSICS  /jj 

rejected  it  he  always  kept  it  aside,  so  to  speak,  in  a  corner 
of  his  mind. 

This  point  established,  it  might  seem  that  there  can 
be  nothing  more  to  be  said  of  any  philosophical  import- 
ance about  Vice's  metaphysics.  But  this  is  not  the  case. 
Since  every  department  of  philosophy  implies  in  itself 
every  other,  and  since  we  can  therefore  always  deduce 
from  the  treatment  of  one  of  the  so-called  particular 
philosophical  sciences  the  character  of  the  whole,  it  is 
legitimate  to  examine  the  New  Science  and  to  consider 
what  metaphysic  is  implicit  therein  ;  to  determine  what 
philosophical  complement  is  logically  supported  and  de- 
manded by  this  science. 

The  New  Science,  which  asserted  the  full  knowability 
of  human  affairs,  not  merely  on  the  surface,  like  a  psycho- 
logical treatment,  but  in  the  depths  of  their  nature  :  the 
New  Science,  which  transcended  the  individual  to  attain 
the  conception  of  the  mind  which  informs  all  things  and 
is  Providence  :  the  Science  which  with  divine  pleasure 
contemplated  the  eternal  cycle  of  the  mind,  elevated 
as  it  was  to  such  a  height,  necessarily  tended  to  interpret 
the  whole  of  reality,  both  Nature  and  God,  as  Mind. 
That  this  tendency  was  objective  to  the  New  Science, 
and  not  subjective  to  Vico,  in  whose  mind  the  science 
so  to  speak  thought  itself  out,  need  hardly  be  repeated. 
Vico  personally  not  only  did  not  encourage  it  but  actually 
curtailed  and  repressed  it  so  energetically  as  to  leave  no 
trace  of  it  in  his  works.  There  was  no  philosophical 
doctrine  of  which  he  had  such  terror  and  against  which 
he  so  frequently  waged  war  as  that  of  pantheism  ;  and 
perhaps  this  polemical  preoccupation  is  the  only  trace, 
though  quite  an  involuntary  trace,  visible  in  his  writings 
of  the  tendency  which  he  must  have  observed  in  himself. 
He  was,  and  wished  to  remain,  a  Christian  and  a  Catholic  ; 
transcendence,  the  personality  of  God,  the  substantiality 
of  the  soul,  though  his  science  did  not  lead  him  towards 


136       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

them,  were  uncontrollable  necessities  to  his  consciousness. 
But  just  as  this  fact  allowed  Vico  to  repress  but  not  to 
eradicate  the  essential  logical  tendency  of  his  thought, 
so  it  enables  us  to  recognise  that  tendency  in  the  facts 
themselves.  An  Italian  critic,  Spaventa,  is  right  when 
he  says  that  in  Vico  the  necessity  of  a  new  metaphysic 
makes  itself  felt ;  another,  a  German  Catholic,  is  equally 
right  in  denning  his  system  as  "  semi-pantheistic."  It 
would  perhaps  be  more  dangerous  to  go  on  to  say,  with 
the  Italian  above  mentioned,  that  Vico  makes  an  advance 
on  the  Cartesian  idea  of  two  substances  and  the  Spinozistic 
of  two  attributes,  and  even  on  the  Leibnitian  doctrine  of 
the  monad,  and  that  he  transcends  parallelism  and  pre- 
established  harmony  by  distinguishing  the  two  pro- 
vidences, the  two  attributes,  nature  and  mind,  in  such 
a  way  that  the  one  is  a  step  to  the  other,  and  by  con- 
ceiving the  point  of  union  and  the  origin  of  the  opposition 
as  an  unfolding  or  development,  so  that  nature  is  regarded 
as  the  phenomenon  and  proper  basis  of  mind,  the  pre- 
supposition which  mind  creates  to  itself  in  order  to  be 
really  mind,  to  be  a  true  unity.  For  while  we  may  doubt 
whether  the  distinction  of  the  two  attributes  or  two 
providences,  the  natural  and  the  human,  is  a  well-grounded 
and  inevitable  consequence  of  conceiving  substance  as 
mind  and  thought,  it  is  impossible  to  deduce  the  evolu- 
tionary transition  from  one  to  the  other  as  a  tendency 
implicit  in  Vice's  conception  of  thought.  There  is 
certainly  particular  documentary  evidence  for  this  latter 
particular  tendency  :  but  it  is  scanty  and  unconvincing, 
and  occurs  not  in  the  system  of  the  New  Science  but  rather 
in  the  chronologically  earlier  system. 

For  the  metaphysic  laid  down  by  Vico  in  the  earlier 
phase  of  his  thought  is  not,  as  it  has  seemed  to  some, 
and  as  it  may  at  first  sight  appear,  entirely  devoid  of 
significance  and  value.  It  shows  the  same  aversion  to 
materialism  and  the  same  love  of  idealism  which  inspire 


METAPHYSICS  137 

the  meditations  of  the  New  Science.  The  philosophy 
of  Epicurus,  which  takes  as  its  starting-point  matter 
already  formed  and  divided  into  ultimate  particles  of 
various  shapes,  composed  of  other  parts  which  are  sup- 
posed to  be  indivisible  owing  to  the  absence  of  void 
between  them,  seemed  to  him  a  philosophy  such  as  to 
satisfy  the  naive  mind  of  a  child  or  the  uncritical  mind 
of  a  woman  ;  and  the  delight  with  which  he  followed  the 
explanation  of  the  forms  of  material  nature  according  to 
this  philosopher,  in  the  poem  of  Lucretius,  was  equalled 
by  the  amusement  and  pity  with  which  he  watched  him 
forced  by  stern  necessity  to  lose  himself  in  countless 
ineptitudes  and  follies  in  trying  to  explain  the  phenomena 
of  thought.  Vico  accused  the  Cartesian  physics  no  less 
than  the  Epicurean  of  a  "  false  position,"  since  it  also 
takes  ready-formed  matter  as  its  starting-point,  differing 
from  the  Epicurean  matter  in  that,  while  the  latter 
limits  the  divisibility  of  matter  at  the  atoms,  the  former 
makes  its  elements  infinitely  divisible  ;  that  the  one  places 
motion  in  the  void,  the  other  in  the  solid ;  the  one  initiates 
the  shaping  of  its  infinite  worlds  by  a  casual  declination 
of  atoms  from  the  downward  path  of  their  own  weight 
and  gravitation,  the  other  generates  its  indefinite  vortices 
from  an  impetus  imparted  to  a  section  of  inert  and  there- 
fore not  yet  divided  matter,  which  on  receiving  this 
motion  divides  into  fragments,  and,  hampered  by  its 
mass,  necessarily  makes  an  effort  to  move  in  a  straight 
line,  and  being  unable  to  do  so  through  its  solidity  begins, 
divided  as  it  is  into  fragments,  to  move  about  the  centre 
of  each  fragment.  In  this  way  while  Epicurus  entrusted 
the  world  to  chance,  Descartes  subjected  it  to  fate  ;  and 
it  was  in  vain  that  to  save  himself  from  materialism  he 
superimposed  upon  his  physics  a  quasi-Platonic  meta- 
physic,  by  which  he  attempted  to  establish  two  substances, 
the  one  extended  and  the  other  intelligent,  and  to  make 
room  for  an  immaterial  agent ;  for  these  two  parts  were 


138      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

not  reconciled  in  his  system,  since  his  mechanical  physics 
included  in  itself  a  metaphysic  like  the  Epicurean,  estab- 
lishing one  kind  and  one  only  of  active  material  substance. 
For  similar  or  analogous  reasons  Vico  rejected  the  philo- 
sophies of  Gassendi,  Spinoza  and  Locke  ;  and  the  physical 
science  of  other  authors  such  as  Robert  Boyle  seemed  to 
him  valuable  for  purposes  of  medicine  and  the  "  spargiric 
art,"  but  useless  for  philosophy.  Galileo  he  considered 
to  have  looked  at  physical  science  with  the  eye  of  a  great 
geometrician,  but  without  the  aid  of  the  full  light  of 
metaphysics.  He  had  sympathy  with  philosophers  who 
were  also  geometricians,  and  therefore  with  the  Pytha- 
gorean or  Timaean  physics,  according  to  which  the  world 
consists  of  numbers ;  with  the  Platonic  metaphysics, 
which  from  the  form  of  our  minds  without  any  other 
hypothesis  establishes,  upon  our  knowledge  and  con- 
sciousness of  certain  eternal  truths  which  are  in  our  mind 
and  cannot  be  ignored  or  denied,  the  eternal  idea  as  the 
principle  of  all  things  ;  with  the  doctrine  of  metaphysical 
points,  attributed  by  him  to  Zeno  the  Stoic  ;  and  finally 
with  the  philosophy  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  the  period 
adorned  by  Ficino,  Pico  della  Mirandola,  Steuco,  Nifo, 
Mazzoni,  Piccolomini,  Acquaviva  and  Patrizio. 

The  fundamental  concept  of  his  cosmology  was  supplied 
by  the  metaphysical  point,  in  which  the  employment  of 
mathematics  in  metaphysics,  a  process  admitted  by  Vico 
as  analogous  to  that  of  construction,  found  expression. 
Just  as  from  the  geometrical  point  proceed  the  line  and 
the  surface,  and  the  point  which  is  defined  as  having  no 
parts  supplies  the  proof  that  lines  otherwise  incommen- 
surable can  be  divided  equally  into  their  component 
points,  so  it  is  legitimate  to  postulate  points  not  geo- 
metrical but  metaphysical,  which  though  not  extended 
generate  extension.  Between  God,  who  is  rest,  and 
matter,  which  is  motion,  the  intermediate  place  is  taken 
by  the  metaphysical  point,  whose  attribute  is  conation, 


METAPHYSICS  139 

the  indefinite  energy  and  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
universe  to  bring  into  being  and  sustain  each  particular 
thing.  The  existence  of  matter  is  nothing  but  an  in- 
definite power  of  keeping  the  universe  extended,  which 
underlies  all  extended  objects  equally  however  unequal 
they  may  be,  and  also  an  indefinite  power  of  motion 
underlying  all  particular  motions,  however  unequal. 
Behind  a  grain  of  sand  lies  something  which  when  this 
particle  is  divided  gives  to  it  and  preserves  in  it  an  infinite 
extension  and  magnitude ;  so  that  the  whole  mass  of 
the  universe  is  included  in  the  grain  of  sand,  if  not  actually, 
yet  potentially  and  in  capacity.  This  effort  of  the  universe, 
underlying  each  smallest  particle  of  matter,  is  neither 
the  extension  of  the  particle  nor  the  extension  of  the 
universe  :  it  is  the  thought  of  God,  which,  free  from  all 
materiality,  gives  motion  and  impulse  to  the  whole. 
Every  particular  determination  of  reality  agrees  with 
this  fundamental  truth.  Time  is  divisible,  eternity  in- 
divisible ;  disturbances  of  the  mind  wax  and  wane,  its 
quiescence  has  no  degrees ;  extended  things  are  corruptible, 
unextended  things  permanent  in  their  indivisibility ; 
body  can  be  divided,  mind  cannot ;  possibilities  are  at 
a  single  point,  accidents  are  everywhere  ;  science  is  one, 
while  opinion  produces  differences  ;  virtue  is  neither  in 
one  place  nor  another,  vice  walks  up  and  down  in  every 
direction  ;  the  good  is  one,  the  bad  is  innumerable  ;  in 
every  kind  of  thing  in  a  word  the  best  occurs  in  the 
category  of  the  indivisible. 

Substance  in  general,  which  underlies  and  sustains 
things,  is  divided  into  two  species,  extended  substance 
or  that  which  equally  supports  unequal  extensions,  and 
thinking  substance  which  equally  supports  unequal 
thoughts.  And  just  as  one  part  of  extension  is  divided 
from  another  but  indivisible  in  the  substance  of  the  body, 
so  one  part  of  thought,  that  is  to  say  a  determinate 
thought,  is  divided  from  another  but  indivisible  in  the 


substance  of  the  soul.  Activity  or  freedom  is  peculiar 
to  the  soul,  and  entirely  denied  to  body :  and  Descartes, 
in  making  a  conation  of  body  the  beginning  of  his  physics, 
was  strictly  adopting  the  methods  of  a  poet  and  falling 
into  the  anthropormorphic  conceptions  of  primitive 
races.  The  phenomena  which  students  of  mechanics 
call  activities,  forms,  or  powers,  are  insensible  movements 
by  which  bodies  move  either,  as  the  ancients  said,  towards 
their  centres  of  gravity,  or,  as  the  modern  theory  of 
mechanics  asserts,  away  from  their  centre  of  motion. 
The  communication  of  motion,  moreover,  is  just  as  in- 
conceivable in  body  as  is  activity.  To  grant  it  would  be 
equivalent  to  granting  the  interpenetration  of  bodies, 
since  motion  is  nothing  but  matter  in  motion  ;  the  blow 
given  to  a  ball  is  only  the  occasion  for  the  energy  of  the 
universe,  which  was  so  weak  in  the  ball  as  to  make  it 
seem  at  rest,  to  expand  and  thus  to  give  it  an  appearance 
of  more  sensible  motion.  On  the  other  hand,  Vico 
agreed  with  the  Cartesians,  especially  Malebranche,  as 
to  the  origin  of  ideas,  which  he  inclined  to  believe  that 
God  creates  in  us  from  time  to  time.  He  also  held  with 
the  Cartesians  that  the  lower  animals  are  automata  ; 
and  he  agreed  with  all  contemporary  thought  as  to  the 
subjectivity  of  secondary  qualities. 

Setting  aside  these  last  doctrines,  which  are  not  Vico's 
own,  indeed  he  scarcely  refers  to  them,  the  fundamental 
doctrine  of  metaphysical  points  is  all  his  own.  His 
attribution  of  it  to  an  imaginary  Zeno,  in  whose  person 
were  combined  and  confused  the  Eleatic  and  the  Stoic 
(a  mistake  common  in  the  philosophical  literature  of  the 
time),  can  deceive  nobody,  and  did  not  even  deceive  Vico 
himself,  who  when  pressed  explained  how  he  had  been 
led  to  that  interpretation  of  Aristotle's  statements  about 
Zeno,  and  finally  says  that  if  the  doctrine  cannot  be 
accepted  as  that  of  Zeno,  he  will  adopt  it  as  his  own, 
without  the  patronage  of  any  great  names.  Nor  on  the 


METAPHYSICS  i4r 

other  hand  can  it  be  traced  to  the  Leibnitian  monadology. 
We  cannot  be  sure  that  Vico  was  acquainted  with  this 
doctrine.  In  any  case  he  does  not  mention  it,  while 
Leibniz  he  does  mention  in  terms  of  deep  respect :  and  the 
resemblance  is  very  vague,  for  the  metaphysical  points 
are  not  monads.  The  discovery  by  Leibniz  and  Newton 
of  the  differential  calculus  may  however  be  said  to  have 
influenced  him.  It  was  then  for  the  first  time  becoming 
known  in  Italy  ;  and  its  terminology  of  maximum  in- 
finities, greater  and  less  infinities,  and  so  on  would,  says 
Vico,  completely  baffle  the  human  understanding,  since 
the  infinite  admits  neither  of  degrees  nor  of  multiplica- 
tion, but  for  the  help  of  a  metaphysic  which  shows  that 
all  actual  extension  and  actual  movement  is  a  power  or 
capacity  for  extension  and  motion  always  equal  to  itself 
and  infinite.  The  contributions  of  Platonic  lines  of 
thought  (the  Platonism  of  the  Renaissance)  and  those 
of  Galileo,  especially  the  latter,  to  Vico's  conception 
have  been  worked  out  with  even  more  justice  :  his 
originality  however  is  in  no  degree  impaired  by  these 
facts. 

The  idea  in  which  his  originality  found  expression 
was,  no  doubt,  fantastic  and  arbitrary,  and  in  consequence 
bound  to  remain  undeveloped  and  without  influence  on 
Vico's  other  conceptions.  To  the  reviewer  in  the  Giornale 
del  letter ati,  who  called  this  metaphysic  a  mere  sketch, 
the  author  replied  that  it  was  quite  complete  :  an  abortion 
in  fact,  rather  than  a  sketch,  and,  as  such,  complete. 
And  in  the  Scienza  Nuova,  beside  a  few  references  to  the 
refusal  to  attribute  activity  to  matter,  there  is  one  fugitive 
but  interesting  attempt  at  a  connexion  with  a  geometrical 
or  arithmetical  metaphysic  on  the  model  of  that  described 
above.  In  this  passage  it  is  stated  that  upon  the  order 
of  material  and  complex  civil  affairs  the  order  of  numbers, 
which  are  abstract  and  absolutely  simple,  is  imposed  : 
and  the  fact  is  noted  that  governments  begin  with  the 


142      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

one,  in  domestic  monarchy,  pass  to  the  few  in  aristocracy, 
advance  to  the  many  and  the  all  in  popular  republics, 
and  finally  return  to  the  one  in  civil  monarchies,  so  that 
humanity  moves  perpetually  from  the  one  to  the  one, 
from  domestic  monarchy  to  civil  monarchy. 

But  if  we  can  and  must  deny  all  value  to  Vico's  cos- 
mology, if  the  contradictions  and  obscurities  in  which  he 
involves  himself  are  manifest,  and  were  observed  by 
critics  of  his  own  time,  still  we  cannot  deny  its  dynamic 
nature  as  opposed  to  the  mechanicism  of  contemporary 
philosophy.  The  theory  of  metaphysical  points,  in 
which  God  appears  as  the  great  geometrician  who 
creates  by  knowing  and  knows  by  creating  the  realities 
of  the  universe,  is  as  it  were  a  symbol  of  the  necessity 
of  interpreting  nature  in  idealistic  language.  We  find 
here  and  there  a  theologian  Vico,  an  agnostic  Vico,  or 
even  a  fanciful  Vico  composing  cosmological  and  physical 
romances :  but  look  where  we  will  among  his  works,  we 
shall  never  find  a  materialistic  Vico. 

Even  this  by  no  means  overbold  metaphysic  aroused 
suspicions  of  pantheism,  though  the  author  insisted  upon 
the  theological  doctrine  that  God's  activity  is  convertible 
ab  intra  with  the  thing  created  and  ab  extra  with  the  fact, 
and  that  therefore  the  world  was  created  in  time  ;  that 
the  human  soul,  which  as  a  mirror  of  the  divine  thinks 
infinity  and  eternity,  is  not  bounded  by  the  body  and 
therefore  not  by  time,  and  is  therefore  immortal ;  and 
that  man,  even  if  God  were  to  reveal  it  to  him,  cannot 
understand  how  the  infinite  enters  into  finite  objects. 
However,  he  thought  it  necessary  to  conclude  his  replies 
to  his  critics  by  collecting  statements  demonstrating  his 
orthodoxy,  and  clinching  the  matter  with  the  remark 
that  "  since  God  is  in  one  sense  substance  and  in  another 
His  creatures,  and  since  the  ratio  essendi  or  essence  is  proper 
to  substance,  the  created  substances  even  as  regards  their 
essence  are  diverse  and  distinct  from  the  substance  of  God." 


METAPHYSICS  143 

Vice's  thought  was  limited  by  the  idea  of  transcend- 
ence, which  prevented  him  from  attaining  not  only  the 
unity  of  reality,  but  also  a  truly  complete  knowledge 
of  that  world  of  man  which  he  had  so  powerfully  ex- 
plained by  means  of  the  opposite  principle.  We  now  see 
why  Vico,  though  he  did  not  deny  the  fact  of  progress, 
could  have  no  real  conception  of  it.  It  has  been  observed 
that  the  conception  of  progress  is  foreign  to  Catholicism 
and  dates  from  the  Protestant  Reformation,  and  that 
therefore  the  Catholic  Vico  was  bound  to  deny  himself 
the  use  of  it.  But  the  conception  of  an  immanent  pro- 
vidence is  no  less  irreconcilable  with  Catholicism,  and 
yet  Vico  is  saturated  with  this  idea.  This  means  that 
he  did  not  lack  the  impulse  :  rather  he  was  unable  to 
pass  a  certain  point  beyond  which  his  faith  would  have 
been  too  obviously  defeated.  Progress,  deduced  from 
the  immanent  providence  and  introduced  into  the  New 
Science,  would  have  accentuated  the  difference  within 
the  uniformity,  the  origin  at  every  moment  of  something 
new,  the  perpetual  enrichment  of  the  flux  at  every  reflux  : 
it  would  have  changed  history  from  an  orderly  traversing 
and  retraversing  of  the  line  drawn  by  God  under  the  eye 
of  God  to  a  drama  whose  ratio  essendi  is  contained  within 
itself :  it  would  have  enmeshed  and  drawn  with  it  the 
whole  universe  and  realised  the  thought  of  infinite  worlds. 
In  face  of  this  vision  Vico  paused  in  apprehension  and 
stubbornly  refused  to  proceed  :  the  philosopher  in  him 
had  yielded  to  the  Catholic. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

TRANSITION   TO   HISTORY  I     GENERAL   CHARACTER 
OF   VICO'S   TREATMENT   OF  HISTORY 

IT  is  clear  from  the  facts  above  discussed  that  the 
historical  portion  of  the  New  Science  could  not  take  the 
shape  of  a  history  of  the  human  race  in  which  peoples 
and  individuals  were  recognised  as  playing  each  its  own 
unique  part  in  the  whole  course  of  events.  To  enable 
it  to  fulfil  such  a  function  Vico  would  have  had  to  close 
up  his  system  of  thought,  which  was  still  at  one  point 
incomplete  and  not  impervious  to  the  religious  idea,  and 
to  elevate  his  provident  deity  into  a  progressive  deity, 
determining  flux  and  reflux  as  the  eternal  rhythm  of  the 
process.  Or  on  the  other  hand  in  order  to  attain  the 
vision  of  individuality,  in  the  diametrically  opposite 
sense,  in  history,  he  would  have  had  to  abandon  his 
rudimentary  idealistic  philosophy,  break  down  the 
distinction  between  ordinary  and  extraordinary  pro- 
vidence, and  trace  the  history  of  man  on  the  plan  which 
God  had  revealed  or  permitted  him  to  discover.  Vico's 
orthodoxy  rebelled  against  the  former  alternative,  while 
his  philosophy  kept  him  from  the  second  :  and  the  result 
of  his  dilemma  was  that  the  history  he  reconstructed 
was  not  and  could  not  be  a  universal  history. 

In  consequence,  it  was  not  what  is  called  a  philosophy 
of  history,  if  that  phrase  is  taken  in  its  original  sense 
of  a  "  universal  history  " — one  which  concentrates  its 

144 


VIC&S  TREATMENT  OF  HISTORY  145 

attention  upon  the  broadest  and  least  obvious  connexions 
of  facts — "  philosophically  narrated,"  more  philosophic- 
ally, that  is,  than  is  usual  with  annalists,  anecdotists 
and  compilers  dealing  with  courts,  politics  and  nations. 
The  controversy  as  to  whether  Vico  or  Herder  can  claim 
to  be  the  founder  of  the  philosophy  of  history  must  be 
frankly  decided  in  favour  of  Herder,  whose  work  shows 
just  that  procedure  of  universal  history  which  is  lacking 
in  the  New  Science.  On  the  other  hand  it  would  be  easy 
to  find  numerous  predecessors  for  Herder,  beginning 
with  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  the  scheme  of  the  Four 
Monarchies,  which  remained  not  only  in  the  Middle  Ages 
but  well  into  modern  times  the  constructive  scheme  of 
universal  history.  Nor  would  it  be  out  of  place  to  add 
that  the  so-called  philosophy  of  history,  in  so  far  as  it 
is  a  universal  history,  constitutes  neither  a  special  philo- 
sophical science  nor  a  form  of  history  capable  of  sharp 
distinction  from  the  rest,  except  when  the  passion  for 
making  it  self-subsistent  gives  it  the  appearance  of  an 
abstract  history  or  a  historicised  philosophy.  Thus  when 
Vico  or  Herder  is  credited  with  the  foundation  of  a  new 
science  in  the  philosophy  of  history,  the  compliment  is 
a  doubtful  one  :  a  fact  which  especially  in  the  case  of 
Vico  has  gone  far  to  obscure  the  value  of  their  work.  In 
fact,  the  "  New  Science  of  the  common  character  of 
nations,"  understood  as  the  equivocal  science  of  the 
philosophy  of  history,  has  eclipsed  the  New  Science  as 
a  new  philosophy  of  mind  and  a  rudimentary  metaphysic 
of  thought. 

The  conflict  which  for  the  general  consciousness 
existed  between  science  and  faith  reappears  in  Vico's 
treatment  of  history  as  a  distinction  and  opposition 
between  Jewish  and  Gentile  history,  sacred  history  and 
profane.  Jewish  history  was  not  subjected,  he  believed, 
to  the  laws  of  history  in  general.  Its  course  was  unique, 
and  its  development  proceeded  on  principles  peculiar 


146      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

to  itself,  namely,  the  direct  action  of  God.  The  New 
Science,  which  in  its  philosophical  part  did  not  give  the 
explanatory  principles  of  this  process,  was  in  consequence 
not  compelled  to  deal  with  it  in  its  historical  part.  This  is 
perhaps  what  Vico  would  have  wished.  But  the  wish 
was  met,  setting  aside  the  necessity  of  guarding  against 
the  charge  of  impiety,  which  was  certainly  a  danger,  by 
his  scruples  as  a  believer,  and  a  conscientious  believer ; 
which  urged  him  to  look  for  some  kind  of  harmony  between 
the  two  histories,  since  however  sharply  distinguished 
(he  recalled  how  even  a  Gentile  writer,  Tacitus,  had 
described  the  Jews  as  "  unsociable  "),  both  alike  developed 
under  terrestrial  conditions  and  had  points  of  mutual 
contact,  at  least  in  the  origin  of  mankind  and  its  regenera- 
tion by  means  of  Christianity.  Following  the  inherent 
tendencies  of  his  thought,  Vico  ought  to  and  would 
willingly  have  avoided  the  narration  of  universal  history 
and  confined  himself  exclusively  to  questions  of  philosophy 
and  philology.  But  as  it  happened,  he  was  compelled 
now  and  then  to  depart  from  his  programme  and  to 
attempt  at  once  a  unification  of  the  two  histories  and 
a  defence  of  sacred  history  based  on  arguments  supplied 
by  science  and  profane  history. 

This  is  the  least  successful,  but  a  profoundly  significant 
part  of  his  work.  He  was  forced  to  admit,  though  the 
admission  was  opposed  by  all  his  discoveries  and  outraged 
his  whole  system  of  thought,  that  the  Hebrews  had 
enjoyed  the  privilege  of  always  keeping  intact  their 
memories  of  the  beginning  of  the  world,  a  memory  which 
other  nations  claimed  in  vain  ;  and  hence  sacred  history 
must  supply  the  true  origin  and  succession  of  universal 
history.  The  necessity  of  connecting  his  views  on 
primitive  civilisation  with  Biblical  chronology,  with  the 
date  usually  assigned  to  the  creation  of  the  world,  with 
the  traditions  of  a  universal  deluge  and  of  a  race  of  giants 
— the  necessity  of  finding,  as  he  says,  the  "  continuity 


VICOS  TREATMENT  OF  HISTORY  147 

of  sacred  with  profane  history  " — led  him  to  the  most 
extravagant  flights  of  fancy.  After  the  flood,  in  the  year 
1656  from  the  creation,  at  the  separation  of  the  sons  of 
Noah,  while  the  Hebrews  began  or  continued  their  sacred 
history  with  Abraham  and  the  other  patriarchs  and  then 
with  the  laws  given  to  Moses  by  God,  all  the  other 
descendants  of  Shem,  Ham,  and  Japhet,  the  first  race 
more  slowly  and  for  a  shorter  period,  the  second  and 
third  with  greater  rapidity  and  for  a  longer  time,  lapsed 
into  the  state  of  nature  and  wandered  over  the  earth 
as  insensible  and  savage  brutes.  And  while  the  Hebrews, 
subjected  to  their  theocratic  government,  strictly  edu- 
cated and  practising  ablution,  remained  of  normal 
stature,  the  members  of  the  other  races,  living  without 
either  physical  or  moral  discipline,  wallowing  in  dirt  and 
excrement  and  absorbing  nitrogenous  salts  (just  as  the 
earth  is  enriched  and  made  fertile  by  excrement),  grew 
to  monstrous  and  gigantic  size.  The  state  of  nature 
lasted  a  hundred  years  for  the  Semites  and  two  hundred 
for  the  other  two  races ;  at  the  end  of  which  the  earth 
which  had  long  been  sodden  with  the  moisture  of  the 
universal  deluge  began  to  dry  up  and  emit  dry  exhala- 
tions or  fiery  matter  into  the  air  so  as  to  generate  lightning. 
With  lightning,  as  we  already  know,  and  with  the  myth- 
ology of  the  thundering  sky,  which  is  Jupiter,  arose  in 
these  brutes  the  consciousness  of  God  and  of  themselves, 
by  which  they  became  human.  Thus  begins  the  "  age  of 
the  gods,"  which,  socially,  is  that  of  domestic  monarchy 
where  the  father  is  king  and  priest.  In  the  course  of  this 
age  the  system  of  greater  deities  was  gradually  established, 
and  the  giants,  by  means  of  their  religions  of  terror  and 
their  domestic  education  taming  the  flesh  and  developing 
the  spiritual  element  in  them,  and  by  the  practice  of 
washing,  shrank  by  degrees  to  the  normal  size  of  the  men 
whom  we  find  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  or  heroic  age. 
Such  are  the  chief  points  in  Vico's  quaint  reconstruc- 


tion  of  the  earliest  history  of  man  upon  the  earth,  harmon- 
ised with  the  account  in  sacred  history.  We  shall  be  less 
inclined  to  amusement  or  ridicule  if  we  reflect  upon  the 
tragedy  underlying  the  comedy :  the  tormented  con- 
science of  the  believer  which  in  its  struggle  with  the 
philosopher  seeks  refuge  in  these  extravagant  ideas. 
At  any  rate,  they  gave  Vico  a  series  of  insecure  stepping- 
stones — the  flood,  the  giants,  the  dry  exhalations — which 
enabled  him  to  cross  the  torrent  of  religious  tradition 
and  reach  the  dry  land  of  critical  history,  where  he  found 
the  primary  starting-point  of  his  philosophy  of  mind, 
the  state  of  nature.  It  may  further  be  suggested  that  the 
contact  with  Hebrew  history — the  only  one  which  pre- 
sented itself  to  him  as  a  history  in  the  strict  sense, 
a  unicum,  something  absolutely  individualised  even  if 
in  a  miraculous  manner — suggested  to  him  the  few 
attempts  met  with  in  his  works  to  assign  to  various 
peoples  a  special  function  or  mission  ;  thus  it  sometimes 
appeared  to  him  that  the  Hebrews  represented  mens, 
the  Chaldeans  ratio,  and  the  Japhetic  races  phantasia. 

Parallel  to  this  imaginary  history  of  the  origin  of  the 
human  race  on  the  earth  is  Vico's  attempt  at  Biblical 
apologetics.  He  lost  no  opportunity  of  adducing  proofs 
from  profane  sources  to  confirm  the  statements  of  sacred 
history.  For  instance,  a  confirmation  of  the  flood  and 
the  giants  is  supplied  by  the  similar  traditions  of  Greek 
and  other  nations.  The  theocratic  government,  which 
is  not  definitely  mentioned  by  any  profane  history  but 
merely  alluded  to  obscurely  by  poets  in  their  tales,  is 
met  with  in  the  government  of  the  Hebrews  before  and 
after  the  flood.  The  Hebrews  again  knew  nothing  of 
divination  because  they  lived  in  direct  contact  with  the 
true  God,  while  the  Chaldees  had  a  system  of  magic  or 
divination  according  to  the  movements  of  the  stars,  and 
the  European  peoples  a  system  of  augury.  One  certainly 
feels  in  all  this  something  of  an  effort,  a  will  to  see  or  not 


VIGORS  TREATMENT  OF  HISTORY  149 

to  see  :  a  kind  of  self-interruption  and  stimulation  to 
belief.  It  is  not  infrequent  among  cultured  and  scientific- 
ally educated  believers.  Again,  in  his  exposition  of  the 
historical  genesis  of  grammatical  forms,  where  he  says 
that  verbs  began  with  the  imperative,  the  monosyllabic 
command  given  by  the  father  to  wife,  child  or  slave 
(es,  sta,  i,  da,  fac,  etc.),  Vico  draws  from  this  an  indirect 
demonstration  of  the  truth  of  Christianity,  because  the 
roots  of  Hebrew  verbs  are  always  found  in  the  third 
person  singular  of  the  past  tense  ;  a  clear  proof  that  the 
patriarchs  must  have  given  their  commands  to  their 
families  in  the  name  of  a  single  God  (Deus  dixit}.  This, 
in  Vice's  opinion,  is  "  a  lightning  to  confound  all  those 
writers  who  have  believed  the  Hebrews  to  be  a  colony 
proceeding  from  Egypt ;  since  from  the  beginning  of 
its  foundation  the  Hebrew  tongue  had  its  origin  in  a 
single  God."  But  in  truth  these  lightnings  instead  of 
descending  upon  the  head  of  the  unbeliever  serve  only 
to  illuminate  the  poverty  of  the  arguments  upon  which 
apologetics  rest,  even  with  a  man  like  Vico  ;  and,  object- 
ively considered,  the  division  introduced  by  religious 
scruple  between  sacred  and  profane  history,  and  the 
consequent  dogmatic  treatment  of  the  one,  with  its 
strange  hypotheses  and  defences,  and  critical  treatment 
of  the  other,  produced  and  still  produces  an  irresistible 
impression  that  the  seclusion  of  sacred  history  from 
human  science  is  due  to  the  impotence  not  of  the  human 
science  but  of  the  sacred  history  ;  its  impotence,  that  is,  to 
preserve  itself  intact  within  the  limits  of  science.  Seldom 
has  a  religious  scruple  so  endangered  the  cause  of  religion. 
But  Vico  had  far  too  genuine  and  exacting  a  scientific 
sense  added  to  his  natural  antipathies  to  permit  him  ever 
to  become  a  Selden  or  a  Bossuet ;  and  hence  this  apolo- 
getic for  and  harmonisation  of  sacred  history  remains  in 
him  a  mere  episode,  which  it  is  possible  to  ignore.  And 
since  on  the  other  hand  he  was  not  permitted  to  treat 


/jo       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

philosophy  and  history  as  entirely  profane  and  to  repre- 
sent the  complex  movement  of  history  according  to  the 
fundamental  criterion  of  progress,  his  only  course  was  to 
look  at  the  facts  from  the  point  of  view  which  his  philo- 
sophy left  open  to  him,  that  of  flux  and  reflux,  the  eternal 
process  and  the  eternal  phases  of  the  mind.  Here  lay 
his  strength.  Here  he  could  recognise  the  specific,  if 
not  strictly  the  individual,  character  of  laws,  customs, 
poetry  and  myth,  of  whole  social  and  cultural  formations 
which  history  down  to  his  own  time  had  entirely  mis- 
understood. For  this  reason,  in  narrating  history  he 
was  bound  to  confine  himself  to  emphasising  the  common 
aspects  of  certain  groups  of  facts  belonging  to  various 
nations  and  periods.  In  the  New  Science,  he  says, 
"  the  whole  history  of  the  laws  and  deeds  of  Rome  and 
Greece  is  set  forth,  not  in  its  particularity  and  in  time, 
but  following  the  substantial  identity  of  intention  and 
diversity  of  the  modes  of  expression."  Elsewhere  he 
says,  "  the  facts  are  adduced  after  the  fashion  of  examples, 
because  they  are  understood  by  means  of  principles," 
for  "  to  see  the  principles  confirmed  by  the  innumerable 
host  of  their  consequences  is  a  thing  which  must  await 
certain  other  works  of  ours,  which  are  either  as  yet  un- 
published or  now  in  process  of  publication."  In  other 
words,  as  we  know,  this  science  contains  on  the  one  hand 
a  philosophical  side,  and  on  the  other  a  descriptive  or 
empirical,  exemplified  in  histo^,  in  which  the  Romans 
figure  not  as  Romans  but  in  virtue  of  the  common  nature 
which  they  share  with  Greeks  and  possibly  with  Japanese  ; 
the  history  of  Rome  under  the  kings  or  in  the  early 
Republican  period  demonstrates  its  affinity  with  that  of  the 
earlier  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  ;  and  Homer  stands 
not  as  Homer  but  as  an  example  of  primitive  poetry, 
and  across  the  centuries  finds  and  greets  his  brother  in 
Dante.  It  is  at  once  a  strength  and  a  limitation,  be- 
cause history  emphatically  does  not  fundamentally  consist 


VICO>S  TREA  TMENT  OF  HISTOR  Y  151 

of  these  resemblances ;  but  without  the  perception  of 
the  resemblances  how  could  we  ever  determine  the 
differences  ?  Dante  is  not  Homer,  the  barons  are  not  the 
"  patres,"  the  Athenian  Solon  is  not  the  Roman  Publilius 
Philo  ;  but  certainly  Dante  is  in  some  respects  more 
closely  related  to  Homer  than  to  Petrarch,  the  early 
barons  are  nearer  to  the  "  patres  "  than  to  the  later 
courtier-nobles,  and  Solon  is  more  akin  to  a  Roman  tribune 
or  dictator  than  to  any  other  of  the  seven  sages  among 
whom  he  is  usually  placed.  To  observe  these  resemblances 
means  denying  or  rejecting  other  more  superficial  ones, 
and  preparing  the  way  for  knowledge  of  individuality 
by  indicating  the  approximate  place  where  the  truth  is 
to  be  found.  Vico  classifies,  rather  than  narrates  and 
represents  ;  but  there  is  classification  and  classification ; 
it  may  be  pressed  into  the  service  of  a  superficial  thought 
or  of  a  profound  one.  And  the  historical  side  of  the  New 
Science  is  one  great  substitution  of  profound  for  super- 
ficial classifications. 

In  this  process,  which  constitutes  the  strength  of  Vico's 
treatment  of  history,  the  deficiencies  and  errors  come 
not  from  outside  the  limits  of  the  process  but  from  causes 
at  work  within  these  limits  themselves.  It  has  been 
alleged  in  defence  of  Vico  that  a  great  part  of  his  errors  is 
due  to  the  scantiness  and  inadequacy  of  the  materials 
at  his  disposal.  But  the  materials  for  any  study  are 
always  scanty  and  inadequate  compared  to  our  thirst 
for  knowledge  ;  and  in  judging  a  historian  the  question 
is  not  this,  but  the  method,  cautious  or  incautious,  on 
which  he  employs  the  materials  that  are  at  his  disposal. 
Again,  it  has  been  said  that  Vico  has  the  faults  of  his 
age  ;  but  this  is  to  forget  that  he  was  born  in  the  century 
which  saw  the  development  of  the  highly  critical  philology 
of  Joseph  Scaliger  and  the  whole  Dutch  school,  and  that 
Zeno,  Maffei  and  Muratori  were  his  contemporaries  in 
Italy.  The  truth  is  that  just  as  the  attitude  of  thought 


152      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

already  described  in  Vico  confused  pure  philosophical 
method  with  the  determinations  of  empirical  science 
and  historical  data,  so  it  confused  historical  research 
with  the  mixture  of  philosophy  and  empirical  science. 
Vico  was  in  a  state  similar  to  that  of  drunkenness  ;  con- 
fusing categories  with  facts,  he  felt  absolutely  certain 
a  priori  of  what  the  facts  would  say  :  instead  of  letting 
them  speak  for  themselves  he  put  his  own  words  into  their 
mouth.  A  common  illusion  with  him  was  to  seem  to 
see  connexions  between  things  where  there  was  really 
none.  This  made  him  turn  every  hypothetical  con- 
junction into  a  certainty,  and  read  in  other  writers 
instead  of  their  actual  words  things  that  they  had  never 
written,  but  which  were  internally  spoken  by  himself 
unawares  and  projected  into  the  writings  of  others. 
Exactitude  was  for  him  an  impossibility,  and  in  his 
mental  excitement  and  exaltation  he  almost  despised  it : 
what  harm  can  ten,  twenty,  a  hundred  errors  do  to  what 
is  substantially  true  ?  Exactitude,  "  diligence,"  as  he 
says,  "  must  lose  itself  in  arguments  of  any  size,  because 
it  is  a  minute,  and  because  minute  also  a  slow-footed 
virtue."  Fanciful  etymologies,  daring  and  groundless 
mythological  interpretations,  changes  of  name  and  date, 
exaggerations  of  fact,  false  quotations  are  met  with 
throughout  his  pages,  and  many  may  be  found  noted  in 
the  fine  edition  of  the  second  Scienza  Nuova  by  Nicolini. 
Thus,  as  we  observed  in  speaking  of  his  philosophy  that 
Vico's  was  not  an  acute  mind,  so  now  in  speaking  of  his 
historical  work  we  must  say  that  it  was  not  critical.  But 
as  while  we  denied  him  acuteness  on  a  small  scale  we 
acknowledged  his  profundity  or  acuteness  on  a  large  scale, 
so  here  also  we  ought  to  add  that  if  Vico  lacked  the 
critical  sense  in  small  matters,  in  great  matters  he  had 
abundance  of  it.  Careless,  headstrong  and  confused 
in  detail ;  cautious,  logical  and  penetrative  in  essentials  ; 
he  exposes  his  flank  or  rather  his  whole  body  to  the  attacks 


VICO'S  TREATMENT  OF  HISTORY  153 

of  the  most  miserable  and  mechanical  pedant,  and  over- 
awes and-  inspires  respect  in  every  critic  and  historian 
however  great.  And,  totus  mens  though  he  is  and  all 
absorbed  by  his  own  discoveries,  often  he  does  not  give 
his  power  of  investigation  and  observation  time  and 
room  to  develop,  and  instead  of  history  he  invents  myths 
and  investigates  romances ;  but  when  he  allows  the 
power  free  play,  it  does  wonders  in  the  field  of  history 
too,  as  we  shall  try  to  show  in  the  following  chapters. 

But  to  judge  the  historical  views  of  Vico  by  confronting 
them,  as  many  have  done,  with  those  of  modern  historical 
research  and  praising  or  depreciating  them  accordingly 
would  hardly  be  conclusive.  Where  the  two  terms  of 
the  comparison  agreed  the  agreement  might  be  fortuitous  : 
where  they  diverged,  the  later  doctrine  might  be  but 
a  development  or  consequence  of  the  earlier  attempt, 
and  in  any  case  the  modern  state  of  historical  knowledge 
by  no  means  provides  an  absolute  standard.  On  the 
other  hand  it  would  be  out  of  place,  as  well  as  beyond 
our  power,  to  rehandle  all  the  problems  dealt  with  by 
Vico  to  see  what  there  is  of  truth  and  falsehood  in  his 
conclusions.  That  would  mean  no  less  than  writing  a 
third  Scienza  Nuova  more  adapted  to  our  own  times. 
Our  task  is  merely  to  indicate  the  principal  historical 
problems  which  Vico  set  before  himself,  to  state  the 
solutions  he  gave,  and  always  to  keep  in  mind  the  state 
of  knowledge  not  in  our  own  day  but  in  Vico's,  so  as  to 
determine  what  progress  in  historical  study  may  be  set 
down  to  his  influence. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

NEW   PRINCIPLES  FOR  THE   HISTORY   OF   OBSCURE   AND 
LEGENDARY  PERIODS 

THE  period  of  historical  research  which  preceded  the  life 
of  Vico  was,  as  we  have  said,  by  no  means  credulous  or 
uncritical.  The  day  was  past  when  "  chronicles  of  the 
world  "  were  compiled,  when  any  fable  and  any  falsi- 
fication however  gross  was  accepted  as  history  :  and  the 
seed  sown  by  a  few  humanists  had  borne  fruit  in  the 
Italian  men  of  learning,  the  French  juridical  school,  the 
school  of  Scaliger  mentioned  above,  and  all  the  great 
chronologists,  epigraphists,  archaeologists,  topographers 
and  geographers  who  in  the  seventeenth  century  formed  the 
first  immense  critical  collections  of  sources  for  ancient 
history.  While  the  philologists  were  thus  improving  and 
perfecting  their  methods,  detecting  impostures  and 
bridging  lacunae,  Bayle,  Fontenelle,  Saint-livremond  and 
many  others  were  engaged  in  spreading  a  scepticism  or 
historical  Pyrrhonism  as  it  was  also  called,  due  to  the 
intellectualistic  philosophy  ;  and  thus  anticipating  the 
polemic  against  the  truth  and  utility  of  history  which 
was  to  arise  with  immense  vigour  in  the  following  century. 
This  latter  tendency  was  hypercritical  rather  than 
critical,  its  end  being  the  destruction  of  history  in  general : 
and  since  historical  scepticism  was  very  apt  to  assume  the 
character  of  a  paradox  adapted  to  the  needs  of  elegant 
society  and  the  wits,  its  influence  on  the  progress  of 

154 


HISTORY  OF  OBSCURE  PERIODS  135 

research  was  very  small,  or  at  most  it  succeeded  in  produc- 
ing strong  reactions,  one  of  which  is  represented  by  Vico,  in 
favour  of  tradition  and  authority.  It  is  on  the  other  hand 
only  proper  to  observe  the  failings  of  the  first  seriously 
scientific  efforts  of  philologists  and  antiquaries.  They  re- 
habilitated witnesses,  laid  bare  falsifications,  reconstructed 
lists  of  rulers  and  magistrates,  connected  chronology  and 
contradicted  certain  legends  :  but,  whether  owing  to  the 
tendencies  of  thought  usual  among  pure  scholars  and 
philologists  or  because  of  the  general  atmosphere  of  their 
century's  culture,  they  neither  had  nor  conveyed  a  feel- 
ing for  the  antique  and  the  primitive.  Strong  in  detail, 
they  were  weak  in  essentials.  When  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  grasped,  for  instance,  the  importance  of  ballad- 
literature  as  a  means  of  transmitting  history  at  a  period 
when  the  use  of  writing  was  unknown  or  uncommon,  he 
did  not  receive  from  this  observation  and  others  like  it 
such  a  shock  as  might  stimulate  him  to  recast  from  top 
to  bottom  his  intuition  and  conception  of  primitive  life, 
as  was  the  case  with  Vico,  who  almost  in  a  flash  grasped 
the  philosophical  form  of  certitude  and  the  two  periods 
of  mental  and  social  life  corresponding  to  it  in  actual 
history  :  the  periods  of  obscurity  and  of  legend. 

Vico  himself  started  from  a  kind  of  scepticism,  a 
scepticism  as  regards  the  prejudices  of  scholars  and 
nations  generally  about  the  character  and  facts  of 
antiquity  :  and  in  combating  these  prejudices  he  drew 
up  a  series  of  principles  or  "  aphorisms,"  inspired  appar- 
ently by  Bacon's  "  idola,"  to  which  they  present  an 
analogy  in  the  field  of  historical  research.  Vico  puts  the 
student  on  his  guard  first  against  the  "  magnificent 
opinions  "  which  have  been  held  up  to  his  own  day 
"  concerning  the  most  remote  and  least  known  antiquity" : 
a  naive  illusion  whose  origin  he  traces  to  the  fact  that 
man  when  in  a  state  of  entire  ignorance  erects  himself 
into  a  rule  for  the  universe.  Here  is  the  closest  analogy 


fj6      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

with  Bacon  :  for  this  statement  is  precisely  like  the  class 
of  "  idola  tribus,"  in  which  thought  makes  itself  the  rule  of 
things  "  on  the  analogy  of  man,  not  of  the  universe  " 
(ex  analogia  hominis,  non  ex  analogia  universi).  On  the 
same  observation  is  founded  the  remark  that  "  rumour 
grows  in  its  course,"  fama  crescit  eundo,  and  Tacitus's 
omne  ignotum  pro  magnifico  est,  everything  unknown  is 
taken  for  something  great.  Hence  arises  the  habit  of 
interpreting  ancient  customs  in  the  expectation  of  finding 
them  similar  or  superior  to  those  of  modern  civilised  life. 
Thus  Cicero  admired  the  humanity  of  the  early  Romans  in 
calling  enemies  in  war  "  guests  "  :  not  realising  that  the 
fact  was  precisely  the  opposite  of  this,  and  that  guests 
were  hastes,  strangers  and  enemies.  In  the  same  way 
Seneca,  by  way  of  proving  the  duty  of  kindness  to  slaves, 
recalled  that  masters  were  anciently  called  "  fathers  of 
the  family  " ;  as  if  "  patres  familias  "  might  not  have  been 
the  very  reverse  of  kind  not  only  to  slaves  and  servants  but 
to  their  own  children,  regarded  as  on  the  level  of  slaves. 
The  same  prejudice  led  Grotius,  in  his  desire  to  show  the 
gentleness  of  the  ancient  Germans,  to  collect  a  great 
number  of  barbaric  laws  in  which  homicide  was  punished 
by  a  fine  of  a  few  pence  :  which  is  on  the  contrary  really 
a  proof  of  the  cheapness  of  the  blood  of  poor  rustic  vassals, 
who  are  precisely  the  "  homines  "  mentioned  by  these  laws. 
In  the  second  place,  he  warns  us  not  to  trust  to  the 
"  conceit  of  nations,"  all  of  which,  Greek  or  barbarian, 
Chaldean,  Scythian,  Egyptian,  or  Chinese,  claimed,  as 
Diodorus  Siculus  observes,  to  have  founded  humanity, 
discovered  the  amenities  of  life,  and  preserved  their  memory 
intact  from  the  beginning  of  the  world.  Each  of  them, 
having  for  several  thousand  years  had  no  communication 
with  the  others  which  might  have  led  to  the  sharing  of 
ideas,  resembled  in  the  obscurity  of  its  chronology  a  man 
who  sleeping  in  a  very  small  chamber  is  misled  by  the 
darkness  into  believing  it  much  too  large  ever  to  touch 


HISTORY  OF  OBSCURE  PERIODS  757 

it  with  his  hand.  He  who  accepts  these  dreamer's  boasts 
for  certain  knowledge  finds  himself  in  the  difficulty  of 
having  to  choose  between  the  various  memories  of 
various  nations,  all  of  which  with  equal  justification 
claim  to  be  original. 

By  the  side  of  national  conceit  Vico  placed  the  "  conceit 
of  the  learned,"  who  desire  their  own  knowledge  to  be  as 
old  as  the  world,  and  consequently  delight  in  fancying  an 
inaccessible  esoteric  wisdom  among  the  ancients,  coincid- 
ing miraculously  with  the  opinions  professed  by  each  one 
of  themselves,  which  they  dress  in  the  garb  of  antiquity 
in  order  to  enforce  their  acceptance.  Such  was  the  mis- 
take not  only  of  Plato,  especially  in  the  researches  of  the 
Cratylus,  but  of  all  historians,  ancient  and  modern : 
Vico  himself  had  fallen  into  it,  and  was  therefore  able  to 
study  it  closely  in  his  own  case,  when  in  the  De  anti- 
quissima  he  believed  himself  to  have  found  in  the  etymo- 
logies of  Latin  words  the  proof  of  an  Italian  metaphysic 
exactly  agreeing  with  his  own  doctrines  of  the  conversion 
of  the  verum  with  the  factum  and  of  metaphysical  points. 

From  these  three  prejudices,  especially  from  the  conceit 
of  the  learned,  follows  the  fourth,  here  called  that  of  the 
"  sources  "  or  "  channels  of  culture,"  ironically  called  by 
Vico  the  theory  of  "  scholastic  succession  among  nations." 
Upon  this  theory  Zoroaster  for  instance  instructed  Berosus 
for  Chaldaea,  Berosus  in  his  turn  Mercurius  Trimegistus 
for  Egypt,  Mercurius  taught  Atlas  the  Ethiopian  lawgiver, 
Atlas  Orpheus  theThracian  missionary ,  and  finally  Orpheus 
established  his  school  in  Greece.  Long  journeys  these, 
and  easy  forsooth  to  those  primitive  nations  which,  scarcely 
out  of  the  state  of  savagery,  lived  perched  on  mountains 
in  almost  inaccessible  situations,  unknown  even  to  their 
neighbours  !  And  these  long  journeys  were  undertaken 
with  the  object  of  spreading  discoveries,  which  any  nation 
could  make  for  itself.  If,  when  nations  came  to  know  each 
other  through  wars  and  treaties,  they  were  found  to  agree, 


158      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

that  was  because  they  all  contained  some  motive  of  truth  and 
sprang  from  the  same  needs  of  man.  Was  it  necessary  to 
suppose  the  Athenian  or  Mosaic  law  to  have  affected  that  of 
the  Romans,  as  did  these  "  comparers  "  or  derivers  of  laws, 
in  order  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  right  recognised  in 
Palestine,  Athens  and  Rome  to  kill  the  thief  by  night  ? 
Was  it  necessary  for  Pythagoras  to  travel  spreading  the 
doctrine  of  the  transmigration  of  souls,  which  we  find  as 
far  afield  as  India  ? 

There  remained  the  prejudice  of  considering  the  ancient 
historians  as  best  informed  about  primitive  times  :  whereas 
in  the  history  of  origins  they  knew  as  little  as,  or  less 
than,  ourselves.  As  for  Greek  history,  Vico  found,  or 
rather  imagined  that  he  found,  in  Thucydides,  a  con- 
fession that  the  Greeks  up  to  the  generation  preceding 
that  historian  knew  nothing  of  their  own  antiquity  :  and 
he  also  observed  that  it  was  only  in  the  time  of  Xenophon 
that  Greek  historians  began  to  have  any  precise  informa- 
tion upon  Persian  affairs.  Roman  historians  commonly 
began  with  the  foundation  of  Rome  :  but  the  beginning 
of  Rome  was  certainly  not  the  beginning  of  the  world. 
Rome  was  a  new  city  founded  in  the  midst  of  a  large 
number  of  small  and  more  ancient  peoples  in  Latium  : 
and  even  in  the  case  of  Rome  Livy  refuses  to  guarantee 
the  truth  of  the  facts  of  the  earlier  centuries  of  its  history 
up  to  the  Punic  wars,  which  he  is  in  a  position  to  describe 
more  accurately.  He  even  confesses  frankly  that  he 
does  not  know  at  what  point  Hannibal  made  his  great 
and  memorable  entry  into  Italy,  whether  by  the  Cottian 
Alps  or  the  Apennines.  So  well  informed  were  the  ancient 
historians  ! 

Owing  to  these  and  similar  sceptical  principles,  the 
whole  of  Greek  history  to  the  time  of  Herodotus  and  of 
Roman  down  to  the  second  Punic  war  seemed  to  Vico 
quite  uncertain,  an  unclaimed  territory,  so  to  speak, 
where  one  might  enter  and  take  possession  by  squatter's 


HISTORY  OF  OBSCURE  PERIODS  IJQ 

right.  He  entered  armed  with  positive  principles  directly 
issuing  from  the  negative  ones  we  have  enumerated. 
For  if  Vico  denied  the  credibility  of  historians  distant 
in  time  from  the  facts  they  described,  if  he  discounted 
national  pride,  if  he  laid  bare  the  illusions  and  charlatanism 
of  the  learned,  he  nevertheless  did  not  rest  content  with 
this  work  of  destruction.  In  place  of  the  old  untrust- 
worthy method  he  had  banished,  he  endeavoured  to  supply 
a  new,  of  better  qualities  and  greater  tenacity  ;  a  system 
of  methods  by  which  it  was  possible  to  acquire  new  his- 
torical documents  and  also  to  improve  the  study  of  those 
already  known.  No  advance  in  historical  knowledge 
is  in  fact  ever  made  except  by  thus  turning  from  the 
received  narrative  to  the  document  underlying  it,  which 
alone  has  the  power  of  confirming,  correcting  and  en- 
riching the  narrative. 

The  first  of  Vico's  contributions  to  historical  method, 
the  first  source  for  the  knowledge  of  the  earliest  civilisa- 
tions which  he  exposed,  is  the  etymology  of  language. 
The  usual  methods  of  this  study  in  his  time  were  purely 
arbitrary :  it  proceeded  by  considering  the  sound  of  each 
syllable  or  letter  and  looking  for  other  superficial  resem- 
blances, and  inferring  from  these  facts  the  derivation  of  a 
word  from  this  or  that  language,  Latin,  Greek  or  Hebrew. 
But  etymology  becomes  a  fruitful  study  only  when  it  is 
remembered  that  language  is  the  best  evidence  for  the 
ancient  life  of  a  people,  the  life  lived  by  them  while  the 
language  was  in  the  making  :  and  when  the  student 
accordingly  never  ceases  to  explain  language  by  customs 
and  customs  by  language.  Thus  the  etymology  of  abstract 
words  leads  us  into  the  heart  of  a  purely  rustic  society  ; 
for  intellegere,  to  understand,  for  example,  recalls  legere, 
to  collect  the  produce  of  the  fields  (hence  legumina, 
vegetables)  ;  disserere,  to  discuss,  refers  to  scattering 
seed  ;  and  the  majority  of  words  for  inanimate  things 
reveal  relations  with  the  human  body  and  its  members, 


i6o      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

and  the  sensations  and  passions  of  man  ;  thus  "  mouth  " 
means  any  aperture,  "  lip  "  the  edge  of  a  pot,  "  forehead  " 
and  "  back  "  are  used  for  before  and  behind  ;  and  so  on. 
Vico  aimed  at  one  science  of  etymology  common  to  all 
native  languages,  composed  of  monosyllabic,  and  largely 
onomatopoeic  roots :  another  of  foreign  loan  -  words, 
introduced  after  nations  became  mutually  acquainted  :  a 
third,  of  universal  application,  for  the  science  of  inter- 
national law,  from  which  it  should  appear  how  the  same 
men,  facts  or  objects,  looked  at  from  the  different  points 
of  view  of  different  nations,  received  different  names  ; 
and  finally  a  dictionary  of  mental  words,  common  to  all 
nations,  which  should  explain  the  uniform  ideas  of  sub- 
stances and  the  different  modifications  of  them  in  national 
thought  concerning  the  human  needs  and  utilities  common 
to  all,  according  to  the  differences  of  their  situation, 
climate,  character  and  customs,  and  should  thus  narrate 
the  origins  of  the  various  vocal  languages,  all  converging 
in  an  ideal  common  language. 

The  second  source  revealed  by  Vico  is  the  interpreta- 
tion of  myths  or  fables,  which  agreeably  to  his  doctrine 
were  not  allegories,  fictions  or  impostures,  but  the  science 
of  primitive  man.  In  the  Diritto  universale  Vico  distin- 
guished four  different  and  successive  characters  of  the 
gods.  At  first  they  represented  natural  facts,  Jupiter 
the  sky,  Diana  the  flowing  water,  Dis  or  Pluto  the  lower 
earth,  Neptune  the  sea,  and  so  on  ;  secondly,  natural 
human  affairs,  for  instance,  Vulcan  fire,  Ceres  corn, 
Saturn  the  seed  ;  thirdly,  social  facts  ;  and  finally  they 
rose  to  heaven  and  were  translated  to  the  stars,  and 
terrestrial  and  human  things  were  distinguished  from 
divine.  But  in  the  two  Scienze  Nuove  he  emphasised 
almost  exclusively  the  third  or  social  meaning,  which 
became  in  his  eyes  the  original ;  since,  he  appears  to  have 
thought,  the  earliest  nations  were  too  much  intent  upon 
themselves,  too  much  immersed  in  their  hard  and  difficult 


HISTORY  OF  OBSCURE  PERIODS  161 

life,  to  speculate  in  abstraction  from  social  matters.  Hence 
he  found  reflected  in  mythology  the  institutions,  inven- 
tions, social  cleavages,  class-struggles,  travels  and  warfare 
of  primitive  nations.  Even  in  considerably  advanced 
periods  Vico  was  hostile  to  naturalistic  or  philosophical 
explanations.  The  saying  "  know  thyself  "  attributed 
to  the  ancient  sage  seemed  to  him  merely  a  piece  of  advice 
to  the  Athenian  democracy,  to  know  its  own  strength, 
later  transferred  to  a  metaphysical  and  moral  sense. 
Beside  this  principle  of  social  interpretation  he  established 
another  of  great  importance :  namely,  that  indecent 
meanings  were  inserted  in  myths  at  a  late  and  corrupt 
period  when  men  interpreted  early  customs  in  the  light 
of  their  own,  or  tried  to  justify  their  own  lusts  by  fancying 
that  the  gods  had  set  them  the  example.  Hence  arose 
the  adulterous  Jupiter,  Juno  as  the  implacable  enemy  of 
Hercules'  virtue,  the  chaste  Diana  soliciting  the  embraces 
of  the  sleeping  Endymion,  Apollo  persecuting  modest 
maidens  even  to  their  death,  Mars,  not  content  with 
committing  adultery  with  Venus  by  land,  but  pursuing  her 
even  into  the  sea,  and,  worst  of  all,  the  love  of  Jupiter  for 
Ganymede  and  of  Jupiter  again,  transformed  into  a  swan, 
for  Leda.  Such  representations  can  only  result  in  un- 
restrained vice,  as  happened  in  the  case  of  the  young 
Chaereas  in  Terence's  comedy.  But  hi  their  original 
shape  and  meaning  all  myths  were  serious  and  austere, 
worthy  of  the  founders  of  nations.  The  pursuit  of  Daphne 
by  Apollo  for  instance  referred  to  the  magicians  or  diviners 
who  arranged  weddings  and  followed  women  through  the 
woods  where  they  were  still  liable  to  promiscuous  ravish- 
ing ;  Venus,  covering  her  nakedness  with  the  cestus, 
was  a  modest  symbol  of  solemn  matrimony  ;  the  heroes, 
sons  of  Jupiter,  were  not  the  offspring  of  adultery,  but 
born  of  permanent  and  solemn  marriages  celebrated 
according  to  the  will  of  Jupiter  as  revealed  by  the  diviners. 
To  the  pure  all  things  are  pure,  and  impure  to  the  impure : 

M 


ids      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

the  forests  and  mountain-tops  could  never  beget  the 
fancies  of  the  closet  and  the  brothel. 

Beside  these  two  rich  sources,  language  and  mythology, 
Vico  names  and  employs  a  third,  which  he  calls  the  "  great 
fragments  of  the  ancient  world,"  that  is  to  say,  the 
memories  preserved  by  historians  and  poets,  such  as  the 
Egyptian  tradition  of  the  three  ages  of  gods,  heroes  and 
men ;  the  language  of  the  gods  mentioned  in  Homer ; 
the  thirty  thousand  names  of  the  gods  collected  by  Varro 
and  referring  to  a  like  number  of  needs  in  the  natural, 
moral,  economic  and  civil  life  of  the  earliest  times  ;  the 
grove  of  Romulus,  which  Livy  calls  "  the  ancient  plan  of 
founding  cities,"  and  a  few  other  golden  sayings  of  ancient 
historians.  Till  now  these  fragments  had  been  useless 
for  the  purposes  of  science,  lying  as  they  did  in  dirt, 
confusion  and  incompleteness  :  but  when  cleaned,  restored 
and  fitted  together  they  conveyed  valuable  information. 
Nor  did  he  overlook  the  monuments  of  architecture  and 
sculpture,  though  the  use  he  made  of  them  was  slight, 
and  he  saw  that  they  were  in  the  long  run  of  little  practical 
value.  He  declared  that  as  for  the  historic  period  the 
most  certain  documents  are  the  public  coins,  so  for  the 
legendary  and  obscure  period  their  place  is  taken  by 
"  certain  traces  remaining  in  marble,"  as  proofs  of  ancient 
customs,  like  the  Egyptian  pyramids  with  their  hierogly- 
phic inscriptions  and  other  fragments  of  the  ancient  world 
found  in  every  region  and  bearing  similar  pictographic 
characters.  It  is  also  worthy  of  remark  that  he  gives 
examples  of  arguments  founded  on  technical  observations 
and  leading  to  conclusions  in  the  sphere  of  prehistoric 
archaeology :  as  for  instance  when  he  says  that  one  early 
period  of  human  life  is  distinguished  by  the  eating  of  roasted 
flesh,  the  simplest  and  least  elaborate  kind  of  food,  because 
it  requires  nothing  except  the  fire  :  a  later  period  by 
boiled  flesh,  which  also  requires  water,  caldron  and  tripod. 

One  powerful  method  of  investigation  in  Vice's  hands 


HISTORY  OF  OBSCURE  PERIODS  163 

is  the  comparative  method,  consisting  in  the  comparison 
of  better -known  processes  of  development  with  those 
known  imperfectly  or  in  parts  only,  and  the  consequent 
reconstruction  of  the  latter  on  the  basis  of  the  former. 
So  for  instance  the  principle  of  heroism,  revealed  by 
evidence  found  in  Roman  history,  helps  to  explain  the 
legendary  history  of  the  Greeks,  to  supply  the  deficiencies 
of  that  of  Egypt  and  to  shed  light  on  the  unknown  history 
of  all  other  nations  of  antiquity.  Without  denying  the 
fact  of  transmission  from  one  nation  to  another,  Vico 
poured  scorn  upon  the  abuse  of  this  conception,  and 
minimised  its  value  in  the  case  of  primitive  societies : 
using  in  its  place  the  idea  of  spontaneous  development 
and  endeavouring  to  reconstruct  the  process  by  the  com- 
parative method.  But  he  took  this  method  in  a  very 
broad  sense,  and  made  use  in  it  of  materials  drawn  from 
the  most  widely  varying  countries  and  periods.  To 
explain  for  example  how  the  thundering  sky  suggested 
to  primitive  man  the  idea  of  a  god,  he  mentions  the 
fact  that  the  natives  of  America,  when  first  they  heard 
the  noise  and  recognised  the  deadly  effects  of  firearms 
in  the  hands  of  the  Spaniards,  believed  them  to  be  gods  : 
the  rhapsodists  of  the  Homeric  poems  reminded  him  of 
the  singers  on  the  quay  at  Naples  with  their  ballads  of 
Roland  and  the  paladins  :  the  transformations  or  meta- 
morphoses described  by  the  ancient  poets  resembled  the 
tales  of  goblins  and  fairies  still  told  by  mothers  to  amuse 
little  children,  or  the  widely-scattered  mediaeval  legends 
of  the  magician  Merlin  :  he  traces  the  mythology  of  the 
hearth  down  to  the  custom  of  the  log  which  in  Boccaccio's 
time  at  Florence  the  head  of  the  family  used  to  light  upon 
the  hearth  at  the  new  year,  sprinkling  incense  and  wine 
on  it,  and  the  Christmas-eve  log  among  the  lower  classes 
at  Naples  ;  not  to  mention  the  custom  in  the  Neapolitan 
kingdom  of  counting  families  by  "  hearths."  He  brought 
the  serpent  Python  and  all  other  mythical  serpents  into 


164      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

relation  with  the  viper  of  the  Visconti  "  che  i  milanesi 
accampa "  ("  which  calls  to  arms  the  Milanese  ")  and 
the  hieroglyphic  script  with  the  "  rebus  de  Picardie  "  used 
in  the  north  of  France. 

It  would  be  useless  to  look  in  earlier  or  contemporary 
philology  for  clear  general  precedents  for  these  principles, 
negative  and  positive,  established  by  Vico  for  the  history 
of  obscure  and  legendary  periods.  They  are  too  closely 
bound  up  with  and  essential  to  his  whole  philosophical 
thought  ever  to  have  originated  apart  from  this  thought 
itself.  The  rude  fragments  of  ancient  Roman  laws, 
customs  and  formulae,  the  Homeric  poems,  the  words  of 
the  Latin  language,  when  examined  with  unprejudiced 
eyes — the  power  which  enables  a  man  of  genius  to  see 
things  without  distortion — and  worked  over  by  a  mind 
ready  to  accept  them  in  their  true  nature,  were  bound 
to  excite  in  Vico,  compared  with  the  learned  but  colour- 
less or  falsely-coloured  historical  research  of  his  day,  a 
rebellion  and  upheaval  like  that  which  took  place  a  century 
later  in  the  mind  of  Augustin  Thierry  when  he  saw, 
depicted  in  the  pages  of  Chateaubriand's  poetical  prose, 
Pharamond  and  his  Franks,  with  their  unrestrained 
movements,  their  rude  and  savage  arms,  their  terrible 
war-cries  and  their  barbaric  songs. 


CHAPTER  XV 

HEROIC   SOCIETY 

As  the  Franks,  in  the  compilations  of  national  history 
made  by  the  Jesuit  colleges  and  other  French  schools, 
appear  stripped  of  all  their  characteristic  features  and 
reduced  to  wise  monarchs,  pious  queens  and  devoted 
warriors  of  the  Church,  so  ancient  and  primitive  history, 
thanks  to  the  rhetoric  and  the  naive  ideas  of  scholars, 
has  been  painted  in  brilliant  and  untrue  colours  of  the 
same  kind  as  those  with  which  Lebrun  or  Luca  Giordano 
painted  their  pompous  and  theatrical  pictures.  Kings 
who  devoted  themselves  to  sage  counsel  in  order  to  aid 
their  subjects  while  at  the  same  time  not  diminishing  the 
splendour  of  their  courts  and  the  brilliancy  of  their  happy 
nobles,  philosopher  kings  such  as  made  Plato  sigh  for 
the  day  when  philosophers  should  rule  or  kings  philo- 
sophise ;  loyal  and  valiant  knights,  eager  to  sacrifice 
themselves  for  the  common  welfare ;  statesmen  who 
used  to  accomplish  pilgrimages  at  speed  in  order  to  bring 
back  from  afar  to  their  waiting  citizens  laws  more  wise 
than  their  own ;  good  fathers  of  families,  admirable 
mothers,  brave  and  obedient  young  men,  loving  and 
modest  maidens,  every  one  a  personification  of  some 
virtue  or  even  of  all  virtues  at  once,  models  of  human 
perfection :  such  are  the  figures  which  sanctified  by  their 
venerable  antiquity  fill  alike  volumes  and  imaginations. 
These  are  the  heroes  of  Greek  and  Roman  history  :  and 

165 


166      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

all  this  splendid  cloth-of-gold  decoration  must  be  torn 
off  and  cleared  away  if  we  would  attempt  to  discover 
in  the  deepest  recesses  of  the  memory  of  mankind  the 
true  heroes,  the  heroes  of  reality,  not  of  literature,  of 
life,  not  of  the  stage :  ignorant,  superstitious,  fierce,  selfish, 
harsh  to  their  families,  cruel  to  their  inferiors,  avaricious, 
grasping,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  or  even  because  of  these  same 
characteristics  of  barbarism,  heroes  :  virtuous  with  the  one 
kind  of  virtue  possible  and  necessary  in  primitive  times, 
the  virtue  of  strength,  discipline,  and  a  deep  and  uncom- 
promising sense  of  religion. 

The  misrepresentation  of  the  primitive  hero  as  a  wise 
and  virtuous  member  of  a  civilised  society  reaches  its 
height,  so  far  as  political  history  is  concerned,  in  the 
failure  to  understand  the  three  chief  words  which  sum  up 
the  constitution  of  the  state  :  king,  people  and  freedom. 
By  a  misunderstanding  of  the  first,  it  is  believed  that  the 
-original  form  of  the  state  was  monarchy,  the  absolute 
monarchy  which  rests  on  the  strength  of  the  people  and 
keeps  in  check  the  nobles  :  which  is  really  a  late  develop- 
ment in  history,  if  not  the  latest.  Into  this  error  had 
fallen  Jean  Bodin,  whom  Vico  chose  as  the  object  of  his 
polemic.  But  Bodin,  more  acute  than  other  political 
writers,  involved  himself  in  a  contradiction,  because 
though  he  accepted  the  common  error  he  nevertheless, 
observing  the  effects  of  an  aristocratic  republic  in  the 
supposed  freedom  of  ancient  Rome,  propped  up  his 
system  by  distinguishing  between  state  and  government, 
and  asserting  that  Rome  in  the  earliest  period  was  popular 
in  state  but  aristocratically  governed ;  and  since  this 
prop  was  too  weak  to  bear  the  whole  weight  of  the  facts 
he  at  last  confessed  that  this  republic  was  aristocratic 
both  in  government  and  in  state,  thus  contradicting 
the  whole  of  his  own  doctrine  as  to  the  necessary  succes- 
sion of  states.  The  truth  is  that  the  kings  of  these  earliest 
periods  were  at  Rome,  as  at  Sparta  and  elsewhere,  not 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  167 

monarchs  at  all.  The  fathers,  patricians  or  heroes 
were  monarchical  kings  only  in  the  period  of  domestic 
monarchy,  when  each  family  lived  separately  ;  but  they 
were  kings  of  a  special  kind,  subject  to  no  one  but  God, 
armed  with  religions  of  terror  and  consecrated  with  the 
most  cruel  penalties.  On  emerging  from  this  first  state, 
when  the  fathers  united  into  a  patrician  order,  their  king 
was  simply  one  or  more  of  themselves,  the  mere  magis- 
trate of  the  order.  Hence  Rome,  after  expelling  the 
Tarquins  by  a  purely  aristocratic  revolution,  did  not  change 
her  state  at  all.  She  preserved  her  kings  in  the  shape  of 
two  consuls,  "  annual  kings,"  two  aristocratic  kings  who 
were  "  deprived  of  no  single  detail  of  the  royal  power." 
The  two  kings  of  Sparta  had  the  same  character ;  they 
were  liable  like  the  consuls  to  be  held  accountable  for 
their  actions  and  could  be  condemned  to  death  by  the 
ephors. 

As  these  states  had  been  falsely  considered  monarchical, 
so,  no  less  falsely,  they  had  been  taken  as  popular  in 
character.  The  people  referred  to  in  this  way  does 
not  coincide  with,  in  fact  it  excludes,  4;he  plebs  :  the 
"  populus  "  was  simply  the  patrician  order,  and  freedom 
meant  simply  the  freedom  of  the  patricians,  the  liberty 
of  the  master  :  and  the  "  patria  "  was  appropriately 
so  called,  because  it  really  was  res  patrum,  the  property 
of  a  few  fathers.  It  is  absurd  to  think  that  the  plebs, 
a  horde  of  the  most  worthless  labourers  treated  as  slaves, 
could  possess  the  right  of  electing  the  king,  and  that  the 
fathers  confined  themselves  to  merely  approving  this 
election  in  the  senate.  The  relations  between  fathers 
and  plebeians  were  quite  other  than  neighbourly  peace, 
mutual  trust  and  hearty  co-operation.  The  heroes, 
according  to  a  passage  of  Aristotle,  took  a  solemn  oath 
to  be  eternal  enemies  of  the  plebs  :  that  was  the  form 
their  democratic  spirit  took.  And  the  "  Roman  virtue  " 
which  sets  before  us  so  many  and  such  glorious  examples, 


168      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA  VICO 

gives  no  example  of  kindliness  to  the  common  people. 
Brutus,  who  dedicated  his  house  in  the  persons  of  his  two 
sons  to  the  cause  of  freedom  :  Scaevola,  who  terrified 
Porsena  by  punishing  his  own  right  hand  in  the  fire  :  the 
stern  Manlius,  who  executed  his  own  son  when  he  returned 
victorious  through  a  successful  breach  of  military  dis- 
cipline :  Curtius,  who  leapt  in  full  armour  with  his  horse 
into  the  fatal  chasm  :  Decius,  who  devoted  himself  for 
the  safety  of  his  army  :  Fabricius  and  Curius,  who  re- 
fused the  Samnite  gold  and  the  kingdom  of  Pyrrhus  : 
Attilius  Regulus,  who  went  to  certain  death  to  preserve 
the  sanctity  of  a  Roman's  oath  :  what  did  these  men 
ever  do  for  the  commons,  except  increase  their  miseries 
by  war,  plunge  them  deeper  into  the  waters  of  usury, 
and  immure  them  more  closely  in  the  private  dungeons 
of  the  nobles  where  they  were  flogged  bare-backed  like 
the  vilest  slaves  ?  And  woe  to  any  aristocrat  who 
allowed  himself  the  slightest  desire  to  alleviate  these 
miseries !  He  was  promptly  accused  of  sedition  and 
treason  and  sent  to  his  death  ;  the  fate  that  in  Rome 
befel  Manlius  Capitolinus,  who  saved  the  Capitol  from 
the  fires  of  the  Gaul,  and  yet  for  his  democratic  sympathies 
was  thrown  from  the  Tarpeian  rock  ;  the  fate  that  came 
in  Sparta,  the  hero-city  of  Greece  as  Rome  was  the  hero- 
city  of  the  world,  to  the  great-souled  king  Agis,  the 
Manlius  Capitolinus  of  Lacedaemon,  who,  for  trying  to 
lighten  the  burden  of  the  unhappy  commons  by  a  law 
abolishing  debts  and  to  aid  them  by  another  giving  them 
testamentary  rights,  was  strangled  by  the  ephors.  The 
famous  "  Roman  virtue  "  amazes  any  one  who  is  obsessed 
by  the  modern  idea  of  a  virtue  consisting  in  justice  and 
benevolence  to  all  mankind.  What  virtue  could  live 
with  such  pride  ?  What  moderation  with  such  avarice  ? 
What  mercy  with  such  cruelty  ?  What  justice  with  such 
inequality  ? 

The  heroes  treated  their  own  families  no  less  harshly 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  i6g 

than  the  plebs.  The  education  of  children  was  stern, 
rough  and  cruel.  The  Spartans,  in  order  that  their  sons 
might  not  fear  pain  and  death,  beat  them  within  an  inch 
of  their  lives  in  the  temple  of  Diana,  so  that  they  often 
fell  dead  in  agonies  of  pain  beneath  their  father's  blows. 
In  Greece  as  hi  Rome  it  was  lawful  to  kill  innocent  new- 
born children,  a  custom  the  reverse  of  the  modern,  by 
which  the  delights  which  surround  little  children  shape 
the  softer  side  of  human  nature.  Wives  were  bought  by 
the  dowries  of  the  heroic  period,  a  survival  of  which  was 
the  practice  solemnly  observed  in  Rome  of  marriage 
"coemptioneetfarre"  (a  similar  custom  is  ascribed  by  Tacitus 
to  the  ancient  Germans  and  must  be  considered  universal 
among  barbarous  peoples),  and  were  maintained  simply 
as  a  necessity  of  nature  for  the  procreation  of  children 
and  in  other  respects  treated  like  slaves ;  as  can  still 
be  seen  in  many  parts  of  the  old  world  and  almost  every- 
where in  the  new.  The  acquisition  of  children  and  the 
thrift  of  the  wife  were  simply  reckoned  as  so  much  profit 
to  the  father  and  husband. 

The  counterpart  of  this  political  and  domestic  system 
is  found  in  the  ordinary  life  of  the  period,  which  was 
innocent  of  all  luxury,  refinement  and  ease.  Pastimes 
were  arduous,  such  as  wrestling  and  hunting,  to  harden 
body  and  mind,  or  else  dangerous,  like  jousting  or  hunting 
big  game,  to  accustom  men  to  think  lightly  of  wounds  and 
death.  Wars  were  carried  on  under  a  religious  aspect 
and  were  always  therefore  extremely  bitter.  From  such 
wars  resulted  the  system  of  heroic  slavery,  by  which  the 
conquered  were  held  to  be  men  without  God,  so  that  they 
lost  civil  and  natural  liberty  at  once.  Foreigners  were 
considered  enemies  :  the  earliest  nations  were  intensely 
inhospitable.  Brigandage  and  piracy  were  recognised ; 
and  Plutarch  says  that  the  heroes  considered  it  a  great 
honour  and  prize  of  valour  to  be  called  "  robbers." 

It  was,  in  fine,  a  society  immediately  proceeding  out 


170      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

of  that  of  the  gods,  which  as  we  know  was  the  climax 
of  the  state  of  nature.  In  its  passage  from  the  prehistoric 
age  as  we  should  say  in  modern  language  into  the  dawn 
of  history  it  still  retained  much  of  the  earlier  customs, 
those  customs  which  Vico  thinking  of  the  lonely  Poly- 
phemus in  his  cave  called  "  Cyclopean  rules."  The  age 
of  gold  out  of  which  it  came,  innocent,  kindly,  humane, 
tolerant  and  dutiful,  as  scholars  and  poets  believed, 
was  in  reality  one  perpetual  "  superstitious  fanaticism," 
tormented  by  a  continual  terror  of  the  gods,  to  placate 
whom  men  used  to  offer  human  sacrifice,  traces  of  which 
remain  among  the  historic  Phoenicians,  Scyths  and 
Germans,  the  tribes  of  America  and  even  the  Romans 
themselves,  who  afterwards  substituted  for  it  the  ceremony 
of  throwing  straw  puppets  into  the  Tiber.  Even  the 
sacrifice  of  children  was  not  unknown ;  memories  of  it 
are  preserved  in  Agamemnon's  sacrifice  of  Iphigenia 
and  elsewhere.  But  in  this  age  of  the  gods,  in  spite  of 
or  by  means  of  this  cruel  superstition,  were  founded  the 
great  institutions  of  humanity ;  religious  cults  together 
with  augurial  divination,  marriage  and  burial.  Weddings, 
judgment-seats  and  altars,  and  the  removal  of  the  bodies 
of  the  dead  from  the  reach  of  the  malignant  air  and  the 
wild  beasts  "  taught  the  human  brutes  to  be  pious  "  as 
Foscolo  says  in  his  Sepolcri,  merely  versifying  Vico's 
prose.  These  "  Cyclopes  "  who  conjoined  and  confused 
in  themselves  the  functions  of  king,  wise  man  (that  is 
divination)  and  priest,  at  first  placed  their  dwellings  on 
the  heights  of  mountains,  in  places  airy  and  therefore 
healthy,  naturally  fortified,  and  near  the  perennial 
springs,  where  were  the  nests  of  eagles  and  vultures, 
the  birds  with  which  augury  dealt.  Hence  the  importance 
of  water  and  fire,  which  became  symbols  of  the  family  ;  the 
earliest  marriages  were  solemnised  "  aqua  et  igni,"  between 
parties  who  shared  a  common  spring  and  hearth,  and 
therefore  belonged  to  the  same  household ;  so  that  they 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  171 

must  have  been  between  brothers  and  sisters.  The  period 
of  the  cyclopes  was  a  strongly  moral  period.  It  was  not 
true  of  it  that  "  pleasure  and  law  were  one  "  in  the  sense 
fancied  by  later  effeminate  poets ;  for  these  men,  whose 
minds  like  those  which  we  may  still  find  among  the 
peasants  of  to-day  were  insensible  to  the  refinements  of 
vice,  found  that  alone  pleasant  which  was  lawful  and 
that  alone  lawful  which  was  useful.  They  were  just 
with  the  justice  of  a  savage  towards  his  god ;  continent, 
for  they  had  made  an  end  of  promiscuous  intercourse  ; 
brave,  hard-working  and  high-spirited,  as  they  were 
bound  to  be,  surrounded  as  they  were  by  hardships  and 
perils.  It  was  only  later  that  these  primeval  groups  of 
humanity  descended  into  the  plains  and  began  to  till 
them,  and  then,  from  living  inland  as  they  did  at  first, 
travelled  gradually  to  the  sea,  learnt  the  art  of  navigation 
and  founded  colonies. 

In  this  way  families  or  gentes  existed  before  states. 
States  were  in  fact  formed  of  families  grouped  into  an 
order  of  gentes  maiores  or  "  ancient  noble  houses  "  as  they 
were  afterwards  called  to  distinguish  them  from  others 
added  later  to  the  order  (for  instance  at  the  time  of  Junius 
Brutus,  to  fill  the  vacancies  in  the  Roman  senate  after 
the  expulsion  of  the  kings)  and  called  "  gentes  minores." 
But  these  gentes  had  within  themselves  an  element  of 
differentiation  and  strife.  Families  were  not  composed, 
as  is  generally  believed  owing  to  the  common  mistake  of 
giving  modern  meanings  to  ancient  words,  of  wives  and 
children  alone ;  but  also  of  slaves,  famuli,  those  who, 
being  less  strong  and  remaining  longer  in  the  nomadic 
state  of  nature,  finally  "  as  sometimes  wild  animals, 
driven  either  by  extreme  cold  or  by  hunters,  to  save  their 
life  betake  themselves  to  inhabited  places  "  had  sought 
refuge  with  the  stronger,  in  the  fortresses  of  the  fathers. 
In  return  for  the  protection  thus  granted  they  tilled  the 
father's  land,  and  were  bound  and  as  it  were  tied  to 


172      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

them,  and  hence  called  nexi ;  they  followed  them  and 
served  them,  and  therefore  gained  the  name  of  clientes. 
The  relation  of  slaves  to  fathers  was  the  second  form  of 
human  relation,  the  first  being  the  natural  one  of  matri- 
mony ;  it  constituted  the  feudal  status,  which  has 
wrongly  been  believed  peculiar  to  a  certain  definite 
period  of  barbarism,  the  Middle  Ages,  whereas  it  existed 
in  all  heroic  societies,  and  was  the  eternal  feudal  principle 
whence  sprang  all  the  republics  of  the  world.  As  Tacitus 
says,  speaking  of  the  Germans,  the  chief  oath  of  these 
slaves  and  clients  was  to  guard  and  defend  each  his  own 
master  and  to  assign  to  his  master's  glory  his  own  deeds 
of  valour  (suum  principem  defendere  et  tueri,  sua  quoque 
fortia  facia  gloriae  eius  adsignare,  praecipuum  iuramentum 
erat]  ;  which  is  one  of  the  severest  conditions  of  the 
feudal  system.  Moreover  the  father's  children  are  rather 
confused  with  the  slaves  than  distinguished  from  them. 
They  are  distinguished  by  their  title  of  liberi,  but  are 
identified  by  their  similar  position  of  obedience  and  lack 
of  separate  personality. 

The  need  felt  by  the  fathers  of  securing  themselves 
against  the  frequent  mutinies  of  the  slaves  led  to  the 
mutual  alliance  of  fathers,  the  patrician  order  and  the 
heroic  state.  Of  this  state  the  slaves  constituted  the 
first  plebs.  They  had  no  citizen's  rights,  since  they  were 
not  citizens  ;  no  solemnities  of  marriage,  since  the  auspices 
were  a  monopoly  of  the  fathers  ;  nor  the  right  of  making 
wills,  since  that  right  had  and  always  kept  the  political 
character  of  a  command.  They  were  therefore  excluded 
from  the  comitia  curiata  held  by  the  patricians  under 
arms,  which  survived  later  for  dealing  with  sacred  ques- 
tions ;  profane  matters  being  everywhere  in  the  earliest 
times,  at  Rome  as  in  Greece  and  Egypt,  considered  as 
sacred.  The  king  of  the  patricians,  whom  we  have  called 
the  magistrate  of  the  order,  was  thus  especially  their  leader 
and  general  in  their  resistance  to  the  slaves  or  plebeians. 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  173 

But  the  heroes  did  not  provide  for  the  stability  of  their 

order  by  means  of  forcible  resistance  alone.     Just  as, 

when  they  abdicated  their  position  of  sovereignty  in  their 

respective  families  for  one  of  subordination  to  the  higher 

sovereignty  of  the  order,  they  formed  a  kind  of  noble 

or  armed  feudal  system,  so  to  keep  their  slaves  more  or 

less  reconciled  to  obedience  they  granted  them,  without 

admitting  them  to  citizenship,  a  kind  of  rustic  feudalism. 

The  origin  of  property  is  thus  explained  in  a  way  entirely 

different  on  the  one  hand  from  the  charmingly  poetical 

theory  according  to  which  men  adorned  with  all  the 

virtues  of  the  golden  age  when  justice  dwelt  on  earth, 

foreseeing  the  disorder  that  might  result  from  communism, 

themselves   with    kindly    arbitration    marked    out    the 

limits  of  fields,  endeavouring  not  to  assign  to  one  nothing 

but  fertile,  to  another  nothing  but  barren  ground ;    to 

one  a  waterless  portion,  to  another  one  abounding  in 

perennial  streams :  and  different  on  the  other  hand  from 

the  "  philosophical  "  origin  by  a  voluntary  submission 

to  the  wise,  or  that  invented  by  "  politician  kings  "  who 

derived  property  from  violence.    The  granting  of  this 

rustic  feudalism,  which  might  be  called  the  first  agrarian 

law,  distinguished  three  kinds  of  land-tenure  :   bonitary 

for  the  people,  quiritary  or  noble,  supported  by  arms, 

for  the  fathers,  and  eminent,  belonging  to  the  whole  order. 

And  since  the  strength  of  the  order  rested  upon  its  wealth, 

it  did  all  in  its  power  to  prevent  the  enrichment  of  the 

plebs  ;  and  in  war — here  we  see  the  social  motive  of  the 

"  Roman  clemency  " — deprived  the  conquered  of  their 

arms  only,  leaving  them  in  bonitary  possession  of  their 

lands  and  imposing  upon  them  a  suitable  tribute.     For 

the  same  reason  the  patricians  were  very  reluctant  to 

go  to  war,  for  then  the  plebeian  multitude  gained  experience 

of  warfare  and  became  dangerous. 

The  detachment  of  law  from  force  was  slow,  and  traces 
of  the  latter  remained  in  every  part  of  the  former.    In 


174      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

the  heroic  republic  there  were  at  first  no  laws  providing 
for  the  punishment  of  offences  and  the  restitution  of 
private  injuries ;  hence,  failing  judiciary  laws,  arose 
the  need  of  duels  and  reprisals,  which  perpetuated  the 
customs  of  the  age  of  innocence  or  of  the  gods.  Poetry 
and  history  describe  some  of  these  duels,  which  were 
armed  judgments  :  for  instance,  that  of  Menelaus  and 
Paris  under  the  walls  of  Troy,  and  that  of  the  Horatii 
and  Curiatii,  between  Rome  and  Alba.  It  was  a  plan  of 
divine  providence,  in  order  that  between  barbaric  nations 
of  scanty  understanding  and  incapable  of  listening  to 
reason  war  should  not  always  beget  war :  that  right 
and  wrong  might  be  to  some  degree  determined  by  a 
belief  in  the  favour  or  disfavour  of  the  gods  as  the  cause 
of  victory  or  defeat. 

These  ordeals  by  battle  were  accompanied  and  super- 
seded by  ordeals  by  verbal  formulae,  used  in  their  religious 
habit  of  mind  with  the  most  minute  and  scrupulous 
exactitude  and  with  care  not  to  alter  a  single  letter  (religio 
verborum).  Horatius,  who  by  killing  his  sister  fell  under 
the  law  "  horrendi  carminis,"  could  never  have  been 
acquitted  by  the  decemvirs,  however  free  from  blame  they 
thought  him ;  and  the  people  acquitted  him,  says  Livy, 
"  more  through  admiration  of  his  valour  than  the  justice 
of  his  cause "  (magis  admiratione  virtutis  quam  iure 
causae).  In  later  days  Roman  law  still  retained  this 
character  of  verbal  precision  to  such  a  degree  that  it  forms 
the  crux  of  several  of  Plautus's  comedies,  in  which 
panders  are  at  the  mercy  of  enamoured  young  men  who 
have  led  them  to  violate  some  legal  formula. 

The  private  law  of  this  society  corresponded  closely 
with  its  economic  constitution.  It  was  an  entirely  natural 
society,  confined  to  the  necessaries  of  life,  and  did  not  use 
money ;  hence  the  law  knew  nothing  of  contracts  formed, 
according  to  the  law  of  a  later  period,  by  mere  consent. 
All  obligations  were  ratified  by  giving  the  hand ;  the 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  175 

first  buying  and  selling  was  barter ;  the  rent  of  a  house 
consisted  in  a  mortgage  on  the  soil  for  building  it,  the  rent 
of  land  in  planting  it ;  companies  and  credit  were  un- 
known. 

The  material  character  of  the  first  contracts  and  the 
forcible  character  of  early  legal  processes  were  gradually 
modified  as  time  went  on,  and  became  symbolic.  As 
the  fiction  of  force  in  marriage-rites  recalled  the  actual 
force  with  which  the  giants  dragged  the  first  women  into 
caves,  so  no  less  the  ceremonies  of  mancipatio,  usucapio 
and  vengeance  had  formerly  been  acts  really  performed. 
Mancipatio  was  performed  as  we  said  with  the  actual 
hand,  that  is  with  real  force  ;  for  instance,  in  occupation, 
the  original  source  of  all  rights  of  possession ;  usucapio 
by  the  permanent  planting  of  the  body  upon  the  thing 
possessed ;  vengeance  was  originally  a  duel  or  a  "  con- 
dictio,"  private  retaliation.  Then  they  became  cere- 
monies or  fictions :  mancipatio  became  a  civil  transference 
with  solemn  acts  and  phrases  (si  quis  nexum  faciet  manci- 
piumgue  uti  lingua  nuncupassit  ita  ius  esto — "  If  any  one 
makes  a  thing  bond  to  him  and  his  possession,  let  the 
law  be  so  that  he  publish  it  with  his  tongue  ") ;  usucapio 
a  tenure  which  is  supposed  to  last  as  long  as  life  ;  retalia- 
tion a  series  of  personal  actions  accompanied  by  a  solemn 
declaration  of  them  to  the  debtor.  There  were  worn  in 
the  forum  as  many  masks  as  there  were  legal  personalities, 
and  under  the  "  person  "  or  mask  of  a  paterfamilias  were 
hidden  all  the  children  and  all  the  slaves  of  the  house. 
Instead  of  abstract  forms,  which  were  not  yet  thought 
of,  living  bodily  forms  were  used.  Heredity  for  instance 
was  invented  as  mistress  of  hereditary  property,  and 
imagined  to  exist  completely  in  every  particular  piece  of 
inherited  goods ;  the  idea  of  indivisible  right  again,  was 
materialised  in  the  glebe  or  clod  of  earth  presented  to 
the  judge  with  the  formula  "  huncfundum."  This  ancient 
jurisprudence  was  throughout  poetical ;  its  fictions 


176      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

turned  facts  into  falsehoods  and  falsehoods  into  facts, 
made  the  unborn  live,  the  living  dead,  and  the  dead  to 
survive  in  their  posterity.  It  created  numbers  of  empty 
legal  personalities  without  subjects  (iura  imaginaria), 
rights  invented  by  the  imagination ;  and  the  formulae 
in  which  the  laws  were  expressed  were  called  because  of 
their  strict  rhythm  of  such  and  so  many  words  "  verses  " 
— carmina.  The  fragments  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  if  care- 
fully considered,  end  their  sentences  for  the  most  part 
in  an  Adonian  verse,  which  is  ultimately  a  fragment  of 
the  hexameter  metre ;  and  Cicero,  realising  this,  begins 
his  "  Laws  "  with  the  sentence  Deos  caste  adeunto  pietatem 
adhibento.  Cicero  also  tells  us  that  the  Roman  boys  used 
to  sing  the  laws  of  the  twelve  tables  "  like  a  regular  song  " 
(tanquam  necessarium  carmen),  and  Aelian  says  the  same 
of  the  Cretan  children  and  the  laws  of  Minos.  The 
Egyptian  laws  according  to  one  tradition  were  "  poems  of 
the  goddess  Isis,"  and  those  given  by  Lycurgus  to  the 
Spartans  and  by  Draco  to  the  Athenians  were  formulated 
in  verse.  The  whole  of  the  ancient  Roman  law  was  a 
"  serious  poem,"  or  as  Vico  says  elsewhere  a  "  kind  of 
Roman  drama,"  poema  quoddam  dramaticum  Romanum, 
performed  by  the  Romans  in  the  forum ;  and  ancient 
jurisprudence  was  a  "  severe  poetry." 

This  poetic  atmosphere  in  heroic  society  and  this 
metrical  tendency  in  its  language  are  facts  borne  out  by 
many  witnesses  and  proofs,  by  the  observations  and 
conjectures  of  scholars  and  by  the  narrations  of  travellers 
and  missionaries.  Hebraists  are  divided  upon  the  ques- 
tion whether  Hebrew  poetry  is  metrical  or  rhythmical; 
but  Josephus,  Origen  and  Eusebius  are  in  favour  of  metre, 
and  St.  Jerome  asserts  that  a  great  part  of  the  book  of 
Job  is  in  hexameter  verse.  The  Arabs,  who  had  no 
knowledge  of  writing,  preserved  their  language  down  to 
the  time  when  they  overran  the  eastern  provinces  of  the 
Greek  empire  by  handing  on  the  memory  of  their  national 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  777 

poems.  The  Egyptians  wrote  the  lives  of  the  dead  in 
verse  ;  the  Persians  and  Chinese  committed  to  verse  their 
earliest  history,  as  also,  according  to  Tacitus,  the  Germans 
and,  according  to  Justus  Lipsius,  the  Americans.  And 
since  of  these  two  last  nations  the  former  was  only  known 
to  the  Romans  late  in  their  history  and  the  latter  to 
Europe  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  there  is  good 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  same  is  true  of  all  other  barbaric 
nations  ancient  and  modern. 

The  earliest  metre,  found  not  only  in  Greece  but  in 
Assyria,  Phoenicia  and  Egypt,  was  the  heroic  or  hexa- 
meter. Owing  to  the  slowness  of  thought  and  the  diffi- 
culties of  pronunciation  it  was  bound  at  first  to  have  a 
spondaic  character  (hence  the  final  foot  in  the  line  was 
always  a  spondee)  and  only  later  when  mind  and  tongue 
became  more  active  did  it  admit  the  dactyl.  Then,  when 
this  activity  still  further  increased,  arose  the  iambic 
(pede  praesto  as  Horace  calls  it)  which  approximates 
most  nearly  to  prose  ;  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  the  early 
prose  writers  before  Gorgias  practically  used  the  iambic 
metre  of  poetry,  and  prose  frequently  passed  over  into 
iambic  verse.  Tragedy  was  composed  in  iambics,  a 
metre  which  is  naturally  adapted  to  it,  produced  as  it 
was  to  give  expression  to  wrath,  according  to  the  story 
which  makes  Archilochus  invent  it  to  express  his  anger 
against  Lycambus  ;  and  if  comedy  afterwards  adopted 
the  same  metre,  it  was  only  by  the  "  meaningless  following 
of  example,"  not  because  the  iambic  metre  was  naturally 
suited  to  it  as  it  was  to  tragedy. 

The  primitive  language  of  these  societies  was  poetical 
not  only  through  its  use  of  metre  but  also  by  being  com- 
posed through  and  through  of  lively  metaphors,  vivid 
fancies,  striking  resemblances,  apt  comparisons,  ex- 
pressions by  means  of  cause  or  effect,  whole  or  part, 
elliptic  or  pleonastic  figures  of  speech,  onomatopoeisms 
or  imitations  of  sounds  by  words,  abbreviations,  com- 

N 


178     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

pound  words,  minute  circumlocutions,  characteristic 
epithets,  contortions  in  syntax  and  episodes.  All  these 
are  ways  of  makhig  oneself  understood  devised  by  men 
ignorant  of  the  precise  words  required,  or  of  a  word,  if 
in  conversation,  understood  by  both  parties.  The  episode 
is  characteristic  of  women  and  peasants,  who  are  unable 
to  select  what  they  need  and  omit  what  is  alien  to  their 
subject ;  contorted  language  is  the  result  of  inability  to 
express  oneself  directly,  or  of  being  prevented  from  doing 
so,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  case  of  irascible  or  contemptuous 
persons,  who  make  use  of  the  nominative  and  oblique 
cases  but  do  not  utter  verbs.  The  very  words  of  these 
languages  taken  one  by  one  reveal  in  the  frequency  of 
their  diphthongs  a  trace  of  the  song  out  of  which  speech 
arose ;  and  this  abundance  of  diphthongs  still  remains 
in  the  Greek  and  French  languages,  which  passed  rapidly 
and  prematurely  from  the  age  of  spontaneity  to  that  of 
reflection.  The  German  language  would  certainly  offer 
a  rich  store  of  heroic  forms,  with  its  abundance  of  com- 
pound words  which  so  happily  translate  those  of  Greek, 
and  its  syntax  which  exceeds  Latin  in  complexity  as 
Latin  does  Greek.  If  German  scholars,  says  Vico  several 
times  with  a  wistful  glance  at  a  field  of  study  closed  to 
himself,  would  use  the  principles  of  the  New  Science 
in  research  upon  the  origins  of  their  language,  they  would 
certainly  make  wonderful  discoveries. 

The  conception  of  the  universe  prevalent  among  the 
men  of  this  period,  and  the  histories  of  themselves  which 
they  related,  of  their  origins,  warfare  and  fortunes,  were 
also  poetical,  or  rather  mythical.  It  was  even  the  case 
as  we  have  seen  that  their  conceptions  in  the  sphere  of 
social  history  preceded  those  of  a  cosmological,  physical 
or  psychological  character.  By  a  rigid  application  of  this 
principle  Vico  developed  his  doctrine  of  "  natural  theo- 
gony,"  arising  naturally  in  the  imagination  on  the  occasion 
of  certain  human  needs  and  utilities  :  the  genesis  of  the 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  I7g 

twelve  greater  Gods,  Di  maiores,  that  is  to  say,  the  gods 
invented  by  the  gentes  maiores  and,  to  a  great  extent, 
brought  by  them  to  the  foundation  of  the  state.     Jupiter 
or  the  sky,  with  his  language  of  lightning,  was  the  author 
of  the  first  laws  of  the  family  ;  Juno  symbolised  marriage, 
Diana  matrimonial  chastity,  Apollo  the  light  of  civilisa- 
tion ;    Vulcan,  Saturn  and  Cybele  were  respectively  the 
fire  with  which  the  forests  were  burnt  to  make  clearings, 
the  sowing  of  seed  and  the  tilling  of  land  ;  Mars  symbolised 
the  warfare  of  the  heroes  "  pro  aris  et  focis,"  and  Venus 
civilised   beauty.     In   addition   to  this   celestial   Venus 
arose  a  plebeian  Venus  to  whom  was  given  the  attribute 
of  doves  ;  not  as  typifying  the  passion  of  love,  but  because 
they  were   "  degeneres,"   common  birds  in   comparison 
with  the  eagle.     A  double  signification,  patrician  and 
plebeian,  was  given  in  the  same  way  to  Vulcan  and  Mars. 
The  stormy  relations  of  the  fathers  with  the  slaves,  the 
struggles  and  penalties  referred  to  in  the  myths  of  Tantalus 
and  Sisyphus,  begin  to  be  reflected  in  the  twelve  greater 
gods.     Hercules,  struggling  with   Antaeus,  signifies   the 
nobles  of  the  heroic  cities,  and  Antaeus  the  mutinied  slaves 
led  back  into  the  primitive  cities  on  the  mountain-tops 
(Antaeus  lifted  up  into  the  air)  and  overcome  and  bound 
down  to  the  earth,  that  is  to  say  forced  back  to  their 
servile  labour.     The  birth  of  the  tenth  divinity,  Minerva, 
expresses  the  weakening  and  diminution  of  the  heroic 
power,  since  the  plebeian  Vulcan  (the  mutinied  slaves) 
strikes  the  head  of  Jupiter  with  an  axe,  the  tool  of  a  servile 
art.     Mercury  represents  the  granting  of  bonitary  rights 
to  the  plebs  and  the  maintenance  of  quiritary  rights  by 
the  fathers.     The  last  of  the  twelve  deities,  Neptune, 
arose  wben  the  peoples  descended  to  the  sea-coast ;   and 
the  legends  of  Minos,  the  Argonauts,  the  Trojan'  war, 
the  return  of  Ulysses,  Europa  and  the  bull,  the  Minotaur, 
Perseus  and  Theseus  refer  to  colonisation  and  piracy. 
The  mythological  interpretation  of  history  does  not 


i8o     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

cease  with  the  foundation  of  states.  The  founders  of 
civilisation,  Zoroaster  and  Mercurius  Trimegistus,  Orpheus 
and  Confucius,  even  if  they  are  not  strictly  gods,  are  at 
least  poetical  characters.  Aesop  is  typical  of  the  "  socii  " 
or  slaves  of  the  heroes  and  hence  is  represented  as  ugly, 
that  is,  devoid  of  civilised  beauty  (honestas)  ;  and  his 
fable  of  the  lions'  society  shows  to  perfection  the  real  rela- 
tion of  the  heroes  to  their  slaves,  in  which  the  latter  share 
the  toils,  but  not  the  spoils.  Draco,  of  whom  Greek 
historians  tell  us  nothing  but  that  he  imposed  a  stern 
code  of  laws,  symbolises  the  cruelty  of  the  heroes  to  their 
slaves.  Solon  was  either  a  party-leader  of  the  Athenian 
plebs,  or  else  a  simple  personification  of  the  plebs  itself, 
considered  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  vengeance.  In 
the  history  of  Rome  we  find  poetical  figures  in  Romulus, 
to  whom  were  ascribed  all  the  laws  of  the  orders ;  in 
Numa,  author  of  the  laws  dealing  with  sacred  matters 
and  religious  ceremonies ;  in  Tullus  Hostilius,  who 
organised  and  legislated  for  the  military  system ;  in 
Servius  Tullius  the  author  of  the  census  (which  has  been 
imagined,  contrary  to  all  historical  truth,  the  foundation 
of  a  popular  republic,  whereas  it  was  really  the  foundation 
of  an  aristocratic)  ;  and  in  Tarquinius  Priscus,  who  in- 
vented insignia  of  rank  and  military  uniforms  ;  lastly, 
the  Decemvirs  and  the  Twelve  Tables  are  turned  into 
poetical  figures,  since  to  these  events  and  persons  were 
ascribed  a  great  number  of  laws  favourable  to  liberty 
and  really  dating  from  a  later  period. 

Thus,  before  philosophers  began  to  elaborate  the 
system  of  myths  by  creating  new  ones  when  they  be- 
lieved they  were  interpreting  the  old  (Plato  for  instance 
introduced  into  the  myth  of  Jupiter  the  idea  of  the  omni- 
present and  all-pervading  ether,  his  own  invention,  and 
other  philosophers  saw  in  the  birth  of  Minerva  from  the 
head  of  Jupiter  a  description  of  the  divine  wisdom,  or 
in  Chaos  and  Orcus  the  confused  mass  of  the  universal 


HEROIC  SOCIETY  181 

seeds  of  nature  and  the  primitive  matter  of  the  world), 
poet-theologians  had  expressed  their  ideas  in  mythology, 
ideas  in  which  the  metaphysical  and  physical  elements 
were  very  small,  but  containing  a  large  nucleus  of  human 
and  political  fact.  The  Chaos  of  these  theologian-poets 
was  the  confusion  of  human  seed  during  the  period  of 
brutal  community  of  women ;  it  was  confused  because 
devoid  of  human  regulation,  obscure  because  devoid  of 
the  light  of  civilisation.  The  misshapen  monster  Orcus 
devoured  everything  because  men  in  this  community 
had  no  human  shape,  and  were  absolved  by  the  void, 
because  through  the  impossibility  of  knowing  their  off- 
spring they  left  no  trace  of  themselves  behind.  The  four 
elements  of  the  world  corresponded  to  the  four  elements 
of  social  life  :  the  air  where  Jupiter  lightened,  the  water 
of  the  perennial  springs,  the  fire  that  burnt  the  forests,  and 
the  earth,  the  scene  of  man's  labours.  Being  and  sub- 
sisting were  conceived  the  former  as  the  act  of  eating 
(peasants  still  say  of  a  sick  man,  meaning  that  he  is  not 
dead  yet,  that  he  is  "  still  eating  ")  and  the  latter  as 
"  standing  upon  one's  feet."  The  composition  of  the 
body  was  analysed  into  solids  and  liquids,  that  of  the 
soul  into  air :  generation  into  the  act  of  "  concipere  " 
or  "  concapere,"  that  is,  taking  hold  of  neighbouring 
material  bodies,  overcoming  their -resistance  and  adapting 
and  assimilating  them  to  one's  own  nature  :  and  all  the 
internal  functions  of  the  soul  were  ascribed  to  the  head, 
the  breast  or  the  heart. 

Cosmographical  ideas  were  narrow,  confined  as  they 
were  to  the  life  of  these  societies.  The  first  heaven  was 
placed  no  farther  off  than  the  tops  of  the  mountains,  where 
the  giants  saw  the  lightning  play  :  the  lower  world  was 
no  deeper  than  a  ditch,  and  was  only  by  degrees  enlarged 
and  sunk  into  the  valleys  as  opposed  to  the  sky,  that  is 
to  say  to  the  mountain-tops ;  the  earth  was  identified 
with  the  limits  of  the  cultivated  fields.  In  the  course  of 


i8a      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

time  the  sky,  the  object  of  contemplation  from  which 
auguries  were  drawn,  was  lifted  to  a  greater  height,  and 
with  it  the  gods  and  heroes  who  were  attached  to  the 
planets  and  constellations ;  and  thus  arose  poetical 
astronomy.  Geographical  knowledge  extended  no  farther 
than  the  country  inhabited  by  each  nation ;  and  this 
is  the  reason  why  peoples  travelling  into  foreign  and 
distant  lands  gave  to  the  new  cities  and  to  the  mountains, 
hills,  passes,  islands  and  promontories  the  same  names 
which  were  borne  by  those  of  their  native  land.  Asia  or 
India  was  at  first  for  the  Greeks  the  eastern  part  of  Greece 
itself,  Europe  or  Hesperia  its  western,  and  Thrace  or 
Scythia  its  northern  district. 

But  we  will  not  enter  into  further  details  ;  indeed  we 
have  omitted  much  already.  It  is  not  the  detail  that 
gives  its  value  to  Vice's  picture  of  the  heroic  age.  His 
etymologies,  his  mythical  interpretations,  the  genesis 
and  chronological  succession  of  his  gods,  the  genesis  and 
succession  of  his  phonetic,  metrical  and  stylistic  forms — 
each,  taken  by  itself,  may  be  contested ;  but  taken  as 
a  whole  they  are  rich  with  a  truth  which  transcends  the 
single  propositions.  This  truth  is  the  mighty  effort 
to  recall  a  form  of  humanity  and  society  still  doubtless 
living  in  surviving  records  and  monuments,  still  recognis- 
able here  and  there  in  a  fragmentary  form  in  various 
parts  of  the  modern  world ;  but  for  centuries,  even  in 
Vice's  days,  buried  beneath  a  mass  of  irrelevant  fancies, 
conventional  types,  and  prejudices  of  every  kind,  which 
prevented  its  true  characteristics  from  appearing. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

HOMER  AND   PRIMITIVE  POETRY 

THE  poet  of  primitive  society  was  Homer :  and  if  such 
was  his  character,  he  could  not  have  enjoyed  the  profound 
wisdom,  the  delicate  and  lofty  sense  of  morality,  and  the 
supreme  knowledge  of  all  the  sublimest  arts  and  sciences 
which  ancient  philosophers  and  writers  fancied  him  to 
possess,  and  the  common  opinion  of  literary  men  and 
critics  still  attributed  to  him  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
What  an  extravagant  philosopher  Homer  would  have 
been,  if  he  had  indeed  been  a  philosopher  :  how  miserably, 
had  he  set  out  to  do  so,  would  he  have  organised  Greek 
civilisation  !  His  Jupiter  indicates  force,  brute  force,  as 
the  standard  of  the  respect  due  to  him;  his  Minerva 
despoils  Venus,  knocks  Mars  down  with  a  stone,  strikes 
Diana  and  is  in  turn  insulted  by  Mars  ;  and  both  Venus 
and  Mars  are  wounded  by  Diomed,  a  mere  mortal.  The 
heroes  Achilles  and  Agamemnon  exchange  insults  such  as 
would  hardly  be  used  by  servants  in  a  comedy  to-day : 
they  call  each  other  "  dogs  "  and  quarrel  in  the  most 
uncivil  manner  for  the  possession  of  Briseis  and  Chryseis. 
Ferocious  in  their  customs,  they  leave  the  bodies  of  their 
enemies  to  dogs  and  crows :  intemperate  in  their  pleasures, 
they  drink  to  excess.  Lofty  intelligence,  kindness  of 
heart,  balance  of  mind  may  be  sought  in  vain  in  all  their 
actions  and  sentiments.  The  fact  is,  these  heroes  show 
themselves  men  of  the  scantiest  understanding,  the  wildest 

183 


j -84     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VI CO 

imagination,  the  most  violent  passions ;  boorish,  bar- 
barous, intractable,  fierce,  arrogant,  defiant  and  obstinate 
in  their  resolves  and  at  the  same  time  flighty  in  the  extreme, 
at  the  mercy  of  any  new  object  that  presents  itself  to  their 
eyes.  Here  again,  the  most  striking  parallel  may  be  found 
in  the  psychology  of  the  peasant,  who  as  may  be  seen  every 
day  embraces  any  reasonable  motive  proposed  to  him 
but  owing  to  the  weakness  of  his  intellect  soon  abandons 
the  idea  he  has  been  persuaded  to  adopt  and  slips  naturally 
back  to  his  first  intention.  In  the  same  way  the  Homeric 
heroes  sometimes  acquiesce  in  the  first  word  of  opposition 
offered  to  them ;  sometimes  at  a  sudden  mournful  re- 
collection they  burst  into  bitter  lamentation  in  the  midst 
of  their  anger :  or  else,  if  while  in  the  greatest  misery  they 
meet  with  something  pleasant,  like  Ulysses  at  the  feast  of 
Alcinous,  they  lose  all  memory  of  their  sorrows  and 
become  completely  cheerful ;  or  else,  when  in  a  calm  and 
peaceful  state  of  mind,  they  take  offence  at  a  harmless 
word  and  flying  into  a  blind  passion  threaten  the  speaker 
with  a  cruel  death.  Even  the  virtues  which  they  possess 
in  an  eminent  degree,  their  frankness,  vigour,  magna- 
nimity and  generosity,  are  tinged  with  this  same  character 
of  unreflective  passion. 

The  hero  of  heroes,  Achilles,  who  bears  on  his  shoulders 
the  destinies  of  Troy,  owing  to  a  private  wrong  he  had 
received  from  Agamemnon — a  grave  wrong,  but  an  in- 
sufficient motive  for  the  ruin  of  his  country  and  his  whole 
nation — condemned  all  the  Greeks  to  defeat  and  destruc- 
tion at  the  hands  of  Hector ;  and  he  only  determined  to 
aid  them  in  order  to  assuage  the  personal  grief  caused 
by  Hector's  slaying  his  friend  Patroclus.  If  only  this 
extreme  aloofness  had  been  due  to  passion  and  jealousy  ! 
But  though  when  Agamemnon  deprived  him  of  Briseis 
he  made  enough  noise  to  fill  heaven  and  earth  and  supply 
the  plot  of  the  entire  Iliad,  yet  he  never  in  the  whole 
course  of  the  poem  shows  a  spark  of  real  love  :  just  as 


HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY  185 

Menelaus  mustered  the  whole  of  Greece  against  Troy  to 
avenge  the  rape  of  Helen  but  never  suffers  the  least  pang 
of  jealousy  against  Paris  who  is  enjoying  her.  So  devoid 
is  Achilles  of  common  humanity,  that  when  Hector  wishes 
to  arrange  that  the  victor  in  the  fight  shall  bury  the 
vanquished,  he  forgets  that  they  are  equals  in  rank  and 
that  death  levels  all,  and  savagely  answers  :  "  When 
have  men  ever  made  a  truce  with  lions,  and  when  have 
wolves  and  lambs  had  the  same  wish  ?  "  and  he  adds, 
"  If  I  slay  thee,  I  will  drag  thee  bound  naked  to  my 
chariot  round  the  walls  of  Troy  three  days  "  (as  he  actually 
did  in  the  sequel)  and  finally,  "  I  will  give  thee  to  my 
hounds  to  devour."  And  he  would  have  carried  out  his 
threat,  had  not  the  unhappy  father  Priam  come  to  him 
to  ransom  the  corpse.  But  even  in  this  deeply-moving 
interview,  when  he  has  received  Priam  in  his  tent  after 
the  latter  has,  escorted  by  Mercury,  passed  alone  through 
the  midst  of  the  Greek  camp,  when  he  has  welcomed  him 
to  his  table,  at  a  single  involuntary  word  that  falls  from 
the  lips  of  the  unhappy  old  man  as  he  bewails  the  loss  of 
so  valiant  a  son  Achilles  forgets  the  sacred  law  of  hospi- 
tality ;  and,  ignoring  the  full  and  complete  trust  which 
Priam  had  placed  in  him,  untouched  by  the  terrible  mis- 
fortunes of  such  a  king,  by  the  respect  due  to  a  father  and 
the  veneration  due  to  so  old  a  man,  without  reflecting 
on  the  reversal  of  his  fortunes,  of  all  things  the  most  apt 
to  excite  pity,  flies  into  a  bestial  rage  and  shouts  a  threat 
that  he  "  will  cut  off  his  head  "  !  Death  itself  does  not 
end  his  anger  at  the  loss  of  Briseis,  were  it  not  that  the 
beautiful  and  unhappy  princess  Polyxena,  daughter  of 
the  once  rich  and  powerful  Priam  and  now  a  wretched 
slave,  is  sacrificed  on  his  tomb,  that  the  shade  glutted 
with  revenge  may  drink  the  last  drop  of  her  innocent 
blood ;  and  in  the  lower  world,  when  Ulysses  asks  him 
what  state  he  prefers,  Achilles  answers  that  he  "would 
rather  be  the  commonest  slave,  but  alive  "  !  Such  is 


186     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

the  hero  whom  Homer  adorns  with  the  permanent  epithet 
of  "  without  reproach  "  (a/tv/ztov)  and  celebrates  in  the 
hearing  of  Greece  as  a  pattern  of  heroic  virtue.  Such  a 
hero,  whose  reasoning  powers  are  concentrated  in  his 
spear-point,  can  only  be  classed  with  those  self-satisfied 
persons  of  whom  we  say  nowadays  that  they  are  too  fine 
to  breathe  the  common  air. 

If  Homer's  greatest  characters  are  so  discordant  with 
our  civilised  nature,  the  similes  which  he  uses  are  drawn 
from  savage  beasts  and  wild  nature  generally.  If  the  life 
which  he  represents — a  life  of  children  in  its  intellectual 
futility,  of  women  in  its  imaginative  vigour,  and  of  head- 
strong youths  in  the  violence  of  its  passion — and  the  tales 
of  which  the  Odyssey  is  full,  tales  worthy  of  an  old  woman 
engaged  in  amusing  children,  prevent  our  attributing 
any  esoteric  wisdom  to  Homer,  the  striking  success  of 
these  wild  similes  is  certainly  not  characteristic  of  a  mind 
tamed  and  civilised  by  philosophy  of  any  sort.  Nor 
could  that  truculent  and  savage  style  in  which  he  describes 
the  various  sanguinary  battles,  the  diverse  and  extrava- 
gantly bloodthirsty  species  of  butchery  which  especially 
go  to  make  the  sublimity  of  the  Iliad,  have  originated 
in  a  mind  humanised  and  softened  by  philosophy. 

But  who  was  Homer  ?  What  opinions  as  to  him  can 
we  find  in  ancient  writers,  and  what  facts  can  we  draw 
from  his  poems  ?  An  unprejudiced  reader  of  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  is  at  every  step  aware  of  and  baffled  by  extra- 
vagant and  inconsistent  statements.  The  life  portrayed 
is  inconsistent :  it  takes  us  now  here,  now  there,  over  a 
long  period  of  time ;  on  the  one  hand  we  find  Achilles 
the  hero  of  force,  on  the  other  Ulysses  the  hero  of  wisdom  : 
on  the  one  hand,  cruelty,  barbarism,  ferocity  and  brutality, 
on  the  other  the  luxury  of  Alcinous,  the  delights  of  Calypso, 
the  pleasures  of  Circe,  the  songs  of  the  Sirens  and  the 
pastimes  of  suitors  who  tempt  and  even  win  over  the 
chaste  Penelope.  On  the  one  hand  we  are  shown  boorish 


HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY  187 

and  uncivilised  manners,  on  the  other  jewels,  magnificent 
clothing,  exquisite  foods  and  the  arts  of  sculpture  in 
bas-relief  and  metal-founding  ;-  on  the  one  hand  a  strictly 
heroic  society,  on  the  other  some  signs  of  popular  liberty. 
This  delicate  life  fits  ill  with  the  savage  and  cruel  life 
which  especially  in  the  Iliad,  is  ascribed  to  the  same 
heroes  at  the  same  time.  To  regard  them  thus  as  con- 
temporaneous is  an  impossibility.  From  the  customs  of 
the  Trojan  period  we  have  leapt  abruptly  into  those  of 
the  time  of  Numa,  to  such  an  extent  that  "  ne  placidis 
coeant  inmitia  "  we  are  compelled  to  suppose  that  the  two 
poems  were  the  work  of  many  hands  extending  over 
many  ages.  The  geographical  allusions  are  equally 
inconsistent.  These,  no  less,  bring  us  into  varied  and 
distant  physical  surroundings.  The  scene  of  the  Iliad  lies 
to  the  east  of  Greece,  inclining  to  the  northward :  that 
of  the  Odyssey  in  the  west,  inclining  to  the  southward. 
The  language,  again,  is  inconsistent.  The  confusion  of 
dialects  persists  in  spite  of  the  revision  of  Aristarchus, 
and  has  been  explained  by  the  most  extraordinary  hypo- 
theses, such  as  the  theory  that  Homer  drew  the  elements 
of  his  vocabulary  from  all  the  various  Greek  nationalities. 
Passing  from  the  poems  to  the  traditions  of  their 
author,  the  lives  of  Homer  by  Herodotus  (if  Herodotus 
really  wrote  it)  and  Plutarch  are  valueless.  The 
most  elementary  facts  about  Homer  are  unknown :  it 
is  precisely  concerning  the  man  whom  they  considered 
the  greatest  luminary  of  Greece  that  the  ancients  leave 
us  most  completely  in  the  dark.  We  know  neither 
Homer's  date  nor  his  birthplace  :  each  one  of  the  Greek 
peoples  claimed  him  as  their  citizen.  It  is  said  indeed  that 
he  was  poor  and  blind,  but  it  is  just  these  details  which 
excite  our  suspicion,  as  our  laughter  is  aroused  by  the 
argument  of  Longinus  which  makes  the  Iliad  the  work  of 
his  youth  and  the  Odyssey  that  of  his  old  age.  It  would 
be  indeed  remarkable  if  such  knowledge  were  current 


188     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

concerning  a  man  in  whose  case  the  two  trifling  details 
of  time  and  place  were  unknown  !  Above  all,  criticism 
must  ask  how  a  single  man  could  ever  have  composed 
two  poems  of  such  a  length  at  a  time  when  writing  was 
not  in  existence  :  since  the  three  inscriptions  of  heroic 
age,  one  of  Amphitryon,  another  of  Hippocoon  and  a 
third  of  Laomedon  mentioned  with  an  excess  of  good 
faith  by  Vossius  are  mere  forgeries  like  those  made  by 
the  strikers  of  false  coins. 

All  these  considerations  led  Vico  to  suspect  that  Homer 
himself  was  not  a  real  person  but  one  of  those  poetic 
characters  to  whom  the  ancient  world  ascribed  long  series 
of  actions,  works  and  events.  If  we  try  to  conceive  the 
Homeric  poems  not  as  the  work  of  an  individual  but  as 
two  great  storehouses  of  the  manners  and  customs  of 
earliest  Greece,  containing  the  history  of  its  natural  law 
and  heroic  period  ;  if  instead  of  a  single  poet  we  imagine 
a  whole  nation  of  poets,  and  instead  of  a  single  act  of 
creation,  a  national  poetry  developing  in  the  course  of 
centuries,  everything  falls  into  its  place  and  finds  an 
explanation.  The  extravagance  of  the  legends  is  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  the  composition  of  the  Iliad  and 
Odyssey  falls  in  the  third  period  of  their  existence.  In 
the  hands  of  the  theological  poets  they  were  true  and 
severe,  by  the  heroic  poets  they  were  altered  and  corrupted, 
and  in  this  corrupt  state  they  were  incorporated  in  the 
two  poems.  The  variety  of  customs  is  explained  if  we 
consider  the  various  periods  of  composition,  and  so  also 
the  "  young  Homer "  and  "  old  Homer,"  which  are 
symbolic  of  the  earlier  and  later  periods  of  primitive 
Greece.  The  diversity  of  sites  assigned  to  his  birth  and 
death  and  the  variety  of  his  dialects  are  accounted  for 
by  the  fact  that  different  peoples  produced  the  lays. 
Finally,  it  is  explained  why  every  Greek  people  claimed 
him  as  a  citizen,  just  because  these  peoples  were  them- 
selves Homer ;  and  why  he  was  called  blind  and  a  beggar, 


HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY  189 

because  such  were  as  a  rule  the  singers  who  went  about 
from  fair  to  fair  reciting  their  tales.  Thus  in  order  to  be 
rightly  understood  Homer  must  lose  himself  in  the  crowd 
of  Greek  peoples  and  be  considered  an  idea  or  heroic 
character ;  a  type  of  the  Greeks  in  so  far  as  they  narrated 
tales  in  ballad  form.  Thus  facts  which  had  only  caused 
confusion  and  lacked  plausibility  in  Homer  as  then  under- 
stood became  natural  and  necessary  elements  of  the 
Homer  now  rediscovered.  Above  all,  this  latter  Homer 
deserves  the  high  praise  of  being  the  first  of  all  historians 
of  Greece  known  to  us.  In  Homer  we  have  a  proof  of 
the  original  identity  of  history  and  poetry,  and  a  con- 
firmation of  Strabo's  assertion  that  before  Herodotus, 
before  even  Hecataeus  of  Miletus,  the  history  of  the 
Greek  peoples  was  written  by  their  poets.  In  two  golden 
passages  of  the  Odyssey  a  man  is  praised  for  having  told 
a  story  well  and  said  to  have  "  told  it  as  a  musician  and 
a  singer." 

Vico  did  not  undertake  a  detailed  investigation  into 
the  way  in  which  the  Homeric  poems  were  elaborated. 
He  seems  however  to  incline  towards  two  chief  poet- 
authors,  one,  a  native  of  the  east  of  Greece,  towards  the 
north,  for  the  Iliad,  the  other  for  the  Odyssey,  a  native  of 
the  west  towards  the  south  :  and  by  the  title  "  Homer  " 
he  understands  a  composer  and  compiler  of  legends. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  owing  to  the  purely  ideal  meaning 
which  this  name  has  for  him,  we  must  not  rule  out  the 
interpretation  that  the  two  Homers  in  their  turn  may 
be  two  streams  of  poetry  and  two  groups  of  peoples  or 
of  popular  singers.  The  historic  figures  whom  Vico  finds 
before  him  are  the  rhapsodes,  men  of  the  people  who 
wandered  independently  about  the  fairs  and  festivals 
of  the  Greek  cities  reciting  the  songs  of  Homer.  From 
the  time  of  their  primitive  composition  long  ages  elapsed 
before  the  Pisistratidae  had  them  divided  and  arranged 
into  two  groups,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  a  fact  which 


igo     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

shows  clearly  that  in  their  time  only  a  confused  mass  of 
material  was  to  be  found,  and  decreed  that  they  should 
henceforth  be  sung  by  the  rhapsodes  at  the  Panathenaea. 
It  is  however  certainly  not  in  the  resolution,  materially 
understood,  of  the  individual  Homer  into  a  myth  or 
poetic  character  that  the  importance  of  Vico's  theory 
lies :  and  the  same  is  perhaps  the  case  with  its  truth. 
From  the  inconsistencies  observed  by  him,  and  not 
always  accurately  observed  (which  are  moreover  un- 
important, since  the  inaccuracies  he  notes  might  easily 
be  balanced  by  the  correct  statements  he  omits),  there 
was  no  strictly  logical  passage  to  the  denial  of  the 
existence  of  an  individual  Homer,  the  principal  author 
of  one  or  both  poems.  These  inconsistencies  might  serve 
to  demonstrate  that  the  poet  or  poets  were  working  upon 
a  rich  fund  of  traditional  material,  of  origin  very  various 
both  as  to  time  and  place,  and  not  regularly  stratified 
according  to  origin,  but  having  its  strata  confused  and 
contorted.  One  or  more  poets,  or  even  many  poets  and 
an  able  compiler  of  their  lays,  or  a  society  of  able  compilers  : 
these  and  similar  hypotheses  might  equally  well  have  been 
suggested,  as  happened  later,  and  supported,  as  was  later 
the  case,  by  arguments  neither  more  nor  less  cogent, 
because  incapable  of  documentary  proof.  But  under- 
lying this  resolution  of  Homer  into  a  poetic  character, 
as  it  underlay  other  resolutions  made  or  attempted 
by  Vico,  lay  the  discovery  of  the  long  and  laborious 
historical  genesis  through  which  the  matter  of  these 
poems  had  passed,  so  that  in  this  sense  they  might  really 
be  called  a  product  of  collaboration  on  the  part  of  the 
whole  Greek  people.  The  substitution  of  a  nation  of 
Homers  for  a  single  Homer  was  only  another  case  of 
mythology  constructed  according  to  the  principles  dis- 
covered by  Vico  himself :  mythology  which  must  be 
retranslated  into  scientific  prose.  In  the  same  way 
Vico's  analysis  of  the  customs  described  in  the  Homeric 


HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY  igi 

poems  may  be,  and  is,  not  only  here  and  there  adulterated 
with  a  few  inaccuracies,  but  is  on  the  whole  exaggerated 
and  one-sided.  Still,  this  analysis  taken  as  a  whole  was 
a  great  advance  and  opened  new  paths  to  Homeric 
criticism.  How  could  the  stubborn  illusion  of  the  noble 
Homeric  hero,  a  great  lord  and  a  good  ruler,  a  shining 
example  of  all  civil,  military  and  domestic  virtues,  be  dis- 
pelled except  by  setting  against  it  the  picture  of  a  boorish 
Achilles,  full  of  elemental  passions,  violent,  stubborn, 
unreasoning,  quick  to  a  generous  impulse  but  no  less 
quick  to  outbursts  of  brutal  wrath  ? 

Vice's  progress  in  artistic  appreciation  of  the  Homeric 
poetry  was  no  less  marked.  The  recognition  that  a  sound 
and  rational  philosophy  was  not  to  be  found  in  the  poet 
Homer  would,  in  the  mouth  of  any  other  critic  of  the 
time,  have  amounted  to  a  slur  on  the  poet :  as  expressed 
by  Vico  and  as  the  consequence  of  his  new  aesthetic  ideas 
it  was  a  compliment.  The  errors  which  intellectualism 
and  neo-classical  criticism  discovered  in  Homer  led  the 
critics  to  repeat  freely  the  saying  of  Horace  that  "  good 
Homer  nods  at  times  "  :  whereas  Vico  on  the  contrary 
exclaims  "  if  he  had  not  nodded  so  often  he  would  never 
have  been  good !  "  (nisi  ita  saepe  dormitasset,  nunquam 
bonus  fuisset  Homems).  Homer  was  a  great  poet  pre- 
cisely because  he  was  not  a  philosopher.  He  had  a 
retentive  memory,  a  strong  imagination  and  a  sublime 
mind  ;  and  neither  the  philosophies  nor  the  arts  of  poetry 
and  criticism  which  came  after  him  could  ever  produce 
a  poet  at  all  like  him.  He  was  the  only  poet  who  could 
conceive  heroic  characters :  his  comparisons  are  incom- 
parable, his  speeches  sublime,  expressive  of  the  indi- 
viduality of  the  speaker,  and  created  by  the  power  of  a 
vivid  imagination :  his  diction  is  clear  and  splendid, 
his  language  composed  entirely  of  similes,  images  and 
comparisons,  and  has  none  of  those  ideas  of  genus  and 
species  by  which  things  are  intellectually  denned.  He 


iga     THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

is  not  delicate  but  grand,  for  delicacy  is  a  small  virtue 
and  grandeur  naturally  despises  small  things  :  or  even, 
just  as  a  great  and  rushing  torrent  cannot  help  the  turbid- 
ness  of  its  water,  and  must  perforce  sweep  rocks  and  trees 
with  it  in  the  violence  of  its  course,  so  too  in  Homer  we 
may  find  things  of  no  value.  But  the  torrent  with  all 
its  impurities  sweeps  on  its  way  superb  and  impetuous  ; 
and  Homer  in  spite  of  and  partly  because  of  his  ruggedness 
is  for  ever  the  father  and  prince  of  all  sublime  poets. 

This  new  departure  in  Homeric  criticism  brought  with 
it  implicitly  a  complete  revolution  in  the  history  of  ancient 
literature.  But  on  this  subject  Vico  made  only  a  few 
scattered  remarks.  He  was  no  specialist :  he  did  not 
write  from  a  specialist's  point  of  view,  and  too  often 
when  documentary  evidence  and  thought  were  unable 
to  solve  a  difficulty  he  solved  it  by  means  of  his  fancy, 
a  faculty  which  was  however  in  his  case  radiant  with 
gleams  of  insight.  Thus,  the  cyclic  poets  were  not 
so  called  because  of  the  circle  of  listeners  in  the  centre 
of  which  they  declaimed  their  poems,  like  the  "  Rinaldi  " 
or  ballad-singers  whom  Vico  saw  on  the  quay  at  Naples, 
and  this  circle  had  no  connexion  with  the  vilem  patu- 
lumque  orbem  of  Horace  :  but  the  observation  that  they 
differed  little  from  these  ballad-singers  was  sound.  In 
the  same  way,  we  need  not  linger  on  his  guesses  at  the 
dates  of  Homer  and  Hesiod,  nor  need  we  take  literally 
his  division  of  lyric  poetry  into  three  periods,  namely 
those  respectively  of  religious  hymns,  funeral  chants  for 
dead  heroes  and  melic  lyrics  or  "  musical  airs,"  the  last 
including  Pindar,  and  admired,  flourishing  as  it  did  at  the 
epoch  of  the  "  pompous  virtue  "  of  Greece,  at  the  Olympic 
games  where  these  poets  sang.  But  still  Vico  has  here 
put  his  finger  on  the  difference  between  primitive  and 
refined  or  cultured  lyric  poetry.  The  origin  of  tragedy 
he  ascribes  to  the  dithyramb  or  dramatic  satire,  of  which 
no  example  has  come  down  to  us,  and  in  rural  customs 


HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY  193 

compared  by  him  to  those  which  were  still  in  evidence 
during  his  own  lifetime  in  Campania  at  vintage  season  ; 
and  he  notes  the  relation  between  tragedy  and  the  epic. 
Tragedy  had  its  rude  beginnings  at  a  time  when  the 
heroic  spirit  was  already  dead  :  it  perfected  itself  by 
becoming  subordinate  to  the  Homeric  poetry,  deriving 
its  inspiration  from  Homeric  characters  and  avoiding 
original  ones.  The  old  comedy  was  closely  related  to 
tragedy.  Like  the  latter  it  was  derived  from  a  chorus, 
and  it  preserved  its  archaic  character  in  that  it  displayed 
living  persons  and  real  actions.  The  new  comedy  on  the 
other  hand  was  marked  off  by  a  profound  change  of  spirit. 
Here  the  effects  of  philosophy  were  directly  felt.  Imagina- 
tive genera  were  superseded  by  intelligible  and  rational 
universals  :  and  Menander  and  the  other  poets  of  the 
new  comedy,  living  in  the  most  humane  period  of  Greek 
history,  took  their  intelligible  genera  from  human  life 
and  depicted  them  in  their  comedies,  over  which  one  feels 
that  the  breath  of  Socratic  philosophy  has  passed.  The 
persons  of  the  new  comedy  were  cast  in  a  mould,  and 
were  not  public  but  private  characters  :  and  as  the  chorus 
represents  the  public  and  argues  about  public  affairs  only, 
there  is  no  room  for  it  in  the  new  comedy.  About  this 
time  began  the  practice  of  inserting  idealised  heroes  of 
perfect  morals  into  poetry.  Aristotle,  remembering  the 
strongly  individualised  characters  of  Homer,  still  main- 
tained as  a  principle  of  poetic  composition  that  the  heroes 
of  tragedy  should  be  neither  very  good  nor  very  bad,  but 
rather  a  mixture  of  great  virtues  and  great  faults.  But 
the  poets  of  the  late  period,  making  use  of  the  idea  origin- 
ated by  philosophers,  formed  a  "heroism  of  virtue":  a 
heroism  which  may  be  called  "  gallant."  Accordingly 
they  either  invented  entirely  new  legends  or  else  used 
old  legends  which  had  originally  presented  themselves  to 
the  founders  of  the  nation  in  an  appropriately  stern  and 
severe  form,  but  softened  them  by  adapting  them  to  the 

o 


i<)4      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

softening  of  manners.  Equally  gallant  is  the  "  shepherd  " 
of  the  Greek  Bucolic  poets,  Bion  and  Moschus,  "  wasting 
away  with  the  most  delicate  love."  He  makes  the 
general  observation  on  Greek  and  Latin  literature,  that 
the  boundary  between  verse  and  prose  was  so  strictly 
guarded  on  both  sides  that  no  ancient  writer  ever  com- 
posed both  orations  and  poems — a  rule  to  which  perhaps 
the  only  exception  is  the  wretched  verses  (ridenda  poemata) 
of  Cicero  :  and  Vico  tried  to  explain  this  fact  by  the 
democratic  habits  which  compelled  orators  studiously 
to  avoid  the  cultivation  of  lofty  and  fanciful  modes  of 
expression,  which  would  have  puzzled  the  people  and 
hindered  their  full  and  clear  comprehension  of  the  point 
at  issue. 

Vico  does  not  treat  Roman  literature  so  fully  as 
Greek,  which  provided  him  with  much  more  primitive 
documents.  But  he  detected  certain  analogies  between 
the  origins  of  Latin  and  Greek  literature.  The  first 
poets  and  authors  in  the  Latin  language  were  the  Salii, 
sacred  poets  ;  and  this  was  natural  in  the  beginning  of  a 
nation's  culture  ;  for  in  the  primitive  religious  period  the 
gods  are  the  only  object  of  praise.  And  just  as  the 
earliest  fragments  of  Latin  known  to  us,  the  remains  of 
the  hymns  of  the  Salii,  give  an  impression  of  hexameter 
verse,  so  the  same  metre  is  felt  in  the  records  of  Romans 
who  celebrated  triumphs,  such  as  the  "  duello  magno  diri- 
mendo,  regibus  subiugandis  "  of  Lucius  Aemilius  Regillus 
and  the  "  fuditfugatprosternit  maximas  legiones  "  of  Acilius 
Glabrio.  The  first  Roman  poets,  too,  sang  true  stories  : 
this  was  the  case  with  Livius  Andronicus  and  his  Romanid 
containing  the  annals  of  early  Rome,  and  with  Naevius, 
and  later  Ennius,  who  described  the  Punic  wars.  Satire 
also  was  levelled  against  real  and  for  the  most  part 
notorious  persons.  The  Romans  however  differed  from 
the  Greeks  in  advancing  with  a  more  measured  step  and 
not  making  the  swift  and  abrupt  transition  from  barbarism 


HOMER  AND  PRIMITIVE  POETRY  195 

to  effeminacy  :  so  that  they  entirely  lost  the  history  of 
their  gods  (which  Varro  called  the  "  obscure  period  " 
of  Rome)  and  preserved  their  heroic  history,  extending 
down  to  the  Publilian  and  Petelian  laws,  in  common  speech 
only.  In  its  greatest  manifestations  the  literature  of 
Rome  is  the  work  of  cultivated  poets  like  Virgil,  whom 
Vico  admires  for  his  profound  knowledge  of  heroic  anti- 
quity, but  says  of  him  that  so  far  as  poetical  power  is 
concerned  he  is  not  to  be  compared  with  Homer ;  a 
verdict  agreeing  with  that  of  Plutarch  and  Longinus, 
but  in  opposition  to  the  view  of  neo-classical  criticism. 
Another  example  of  cultivated  and  reflective  poetry  is 
to  be  found  in  Horace,  who  like  Pindar  in  the  pompous 
period  of  Greece  composed  his  odes  at  the  most  "  ostenta- 
tious "  epoch  of  Roman  history,  the  Augustan  age. 

The  Biblical  literature  would  have  given  Vico  materials 
of  great  value  for  the  study  of  primitive  poetry  ;  and  he 
actually  did  move  a  few  steps  towards  it  when  he  observed 
that  poetry  was  the  primitive  language  of  all  nations 
"  including  the  Hebrews  "  ;  and  that  Moses  made  no  use 
of  the  esoteric  wisdom  of  the  Egyptian  priests  and  wrote 
his  history  "  in  a  style  which  has  much  in  common  with 
that  of  Homer  and  often  surpasses  him  in  sublimity  of 
expression."  But  Vico  drops  the  subject  at  once,  as  if 
he  instinctively  guessed  what  might  come  of  treating  the 
Pentateuch  as  he  had  done  the  Iliad,  and  Moses  like 
Homer.  So  he  prefers  to  wax  enthusiastic  over  the  phrase 
in  which  God  describes  himself  to  Moses  "Ego  sum  qui 
sum,"  to  which  he  ascribes  a  metaphysical  profundity 
only  attained  by  the  Greeks  when  Plato  conceived  God 
as  rt>  5v,  and  unknown  to  the  Latins  down  to  the  latest 
period,  for  the  word  ens  is  not  pure  Latin  but  belongs  to 
debased  Latin.  Or  he  contents  himself  with  emphatically 
pointing  out  that  at  a  time  when  Greece  was  under  the 
sway  of  a  superstitious  and  natural  law,  God  gave  to  his 
people  a  code  "  so  full  of  weight  as  regards  the  dogmas  of 


ig6      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

divinity  and  so  full  of  humanity  as  regards  the  practice 
of  justice,  that  not  even  in  the  humanest  period  of  Greek 
history  could  a  Plato  have  conceived  or  an  Aristides 
executed  it "  ;  a  code  "  whose  ten  chief  enactments  contain 
an  eternal  and  universal  justice  founded  upon  the  excellent 
conception  of  a  purified  human  nature,  and  are  capable 
of  forming  by  habituation  a  character  such  as  the  maxims 
of  the  greatest  philosophers  could  only  with  great  difficulty 
form  by  ratiocination  ;  whence  Theophrastus  called  the 
Hebrews  philosophers  by  nature."  The  success  that 
attended  the  "  will  to  believe  "  was  all  the  more  striking 
if  as  we  suspect  Vico  had  read  the  abhorred  Spinoza's 
Tractatus  Theologico-politicus,  where  the  Hebrew  prophets, 
while  their  "  piety  "  is  recognised,  are  said  to  be  entirely 
devoid  of  "  sublime  thoughts."  Spinoza  maintains  that 
they  only  taught  "  very  simple  things  which  any  one 
could  easily  discover,  and  adorned  these  with  a  style  and 
supported  them  by  reasons  most  calculated  to  move  the 
mind  of  the  multitude  to  devotion  towards  God  "  ;  and 
that  the  laws  revealed  by  God  to  Moses  were  "  nothing 
but  the  laws  of  the  particular  government  of  the  Jews  "  : 
and  he  sets  out  to  examine  the  text  of  the  Bible  and  the 
problem  of  the  authenticity  of  the  Pentateuch  and  the 
respective  authors  of  its  various  books.  We  might  almost 
venture  to  say  that  it  was  Spinoza's  Biblical  criticism 
that  suggested  to  Vico  his  criticism  of  the  composition 
and  spirit  of  the  Homeric  poems  ;  but  that  the  latter, 
after  passing  in  this  way  from  sacred  to  profane  history, 
from  Moses  to  Homer,  set  his  face  stubbornly  against  the 
opposite  transition  from  Homer  to  Moses,  from  profane 
history  to  sacred. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  AND  THE   RISE  OF 
DEMOCRACY 

HEROIC  society  in  the  period  of  youthful  vigour  above 
described  contains  within  itself,  rigorously  repressed, 
and  in  fact  made  into  a  support,  the  element  of  opposition ; 
the  slaves,  clients  or  vassals,  that  is  to  say  the  plebs. 
But  this  element  little  by  little  succeeds  in  detaching 
itself  from  and  opposing  itself  to  the  society,  engaging 
it  in  a  continual  and  undisguised  conflict,  so  as  by  degrees 
to  overthrow  this  old  society  and  give  life  and  form  to  a 
new  society  of  which  it  is  itself  the  material :  a  democratic 
society,  the  popular  republic.  Vico  believes  this  process 
to  be  uniform  in  all  peoples ;  but  since  references  to 
histories  other  than  that  of  Rome  are  either  absent  or 
very  vague  (he  hardly  mentions  the  origin  of  the  Athenian 
democracy)  the  description  of  this  process  appears  in  the 
pages  of  the  New  Science  as  a  fragment  of  Roman  history, 
or  as  we  should  nowadays  call  it  the  social  history  of 
Rome. 

Vico's  guesses  about  the  population  and  primitive 
culture  of  Italy  are  of  no  great  importance.  The  subject 
belongs  rather  to  archaeology  and  ethnography  than  to 
history,  and  Vico  did  not  make  a  special  study  of  it.  In 
the  De  antiquissima  sapientia  Italorum  he  had  provided 
the  origins  of  Rome  with  a  basis  in  an  Italian  civilisation 
of  high  antiquity,  earlier  than  the  Greek  and  derived 

197 


jg8      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

from  Egypt,  which  the  Romans  absorbed  in  a  manner 
agreeing  with  their  character ;  by  rejecting,  that  is  to 
say,  its  theoretical  hypotheses  while  taking  over  their 
practical  results,  just  as  they  adopted  from  the  Etruscans 
their  tragic  religion  and  their  art  of  tactics,  and  as  they 
later  adopted  laws  from  Athens  and  Sparta.  In  this  way 
their  ignorance  and  savagery  remained  unchanged,  and 
hence  they  spoke  the  language  of  philosophers  without 
being  philosophical.  In  his  later  writings  Vico  still  for 
a  time  maintained  the  priority  and  independence  of  the 
earliest  Italian  civilisation  as  regards  that  of  Greece, 
and  considered  Pythagoras  less  as  the  founder  than  as 
the  student  of  Italian  wisdom.  Finally,  however,  he 
seems  to  have  given  up  this  view,  just  as  he  definitely 
abandoned  that  which  explained  the  origins  of  Roman 
religion,  language,  customs  and  law  by  the  imitation 
of  foreign  peoples  and  "  frankly  confessed  that  he  had 
been  in  error  here  "  owing  to  the  example  of  Plato's 
Cratylus.  What  conditions  brought  about  the  rise 
of  Rome  Vico  does  not  precisely  say.  He  is  certain  that 
if  Rome  and  the  world  did  not  begin  together,  at  least 
the  foundation  of  Rome  was  a  new  beginning.  The 
point  of  departure  which  he  assumes  is  the  asylum  of 
Romulus,  consisting  of  the  "  families  "  of  fathers  who  gave 
their  hospitality  to  wanderers  and  made  them  into  famuli. 
There  was  no  Trojan  colonisation  ;  Vico  knows  Bochart's 
treatise  (1663)  criticising  the  legend  of  Aeneas's  arrival 
in  Italy  and  accepts  its  conclusions,  which  only  con- 
firm the  doubts  already  entertained  by  certain  ancient 
historians.  For  Vico,  the  Trojan  origin  of  Rome  is  a 
legend  sprung  from  the  union  of  two  different  examples 
of  national  arrogance  :  that  of  the  Greeks,  who  made  such 
a  noise  about  the  Trojan  war  and  forced  their  Aeneas 
into  the  history  of  Rome,  and  that  of  the  Romans,  who 
accepted  him  in  order  to  boast  of  a  distinguished  foreign 
origin.  The  legend  moreover  could  not  have  arisen 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  /pp 

much  before  the  time  of  the  war  with  Pyrrhus,  when 
Rome  began  to  acquire  a  taste  for  things  Greek.  In 
order  to  explain  the  infusion  of  Greek  names  and  myths 
into  the  story  of  primitive  Rome  and  the  similarity  of 
the  Roman  alphabet  to  the  ancient  Greek,  Vico  would 
incline  rather  to  the  hypothesis  that  early  in  their  history 
the  Romans  conquered  and  destroyed  some  Greek  colony 
on  the  Latin  coast,  of  which  all  trace  has  since  been  lost 
in  the  mists  of  antiquity  ;  and  that  through  receiving 
its  inhabitants  in  Rome  as  refugees  and  allies,  they  came 
under  the  influence  of  several  Hellenic  traditions  and 
customs.  \ 

Vico  does  not  spend  much  time  over  the  historical 
events  of  the  -royal  period.  Here  in  fact  lay  one  of  the 
chief  differences  between  his  criticism  and  that  which 
had  already  been  originated  and  was  continued  after 
his  time  dealing  with  the  first  centuries  of  Roman  history. 
Vico  aims  not  at  substituting  historical  for  legendary 
anecdotes  but  at  understanding  the  essence  of  institutions 
and  the  ways  in  which  they  change.  He  uses  two  guiding 
principles,  as  we  have  seen  in  considering  the  royal 
period  :  first,  that  it  was  a  period  not  of  monarchy  but 
of  aristocracy  and  that  therefore  the  type  of  heroic 
society  or  the  patriarchal  republic  is  applicable  to  it ; 
secondly,  that  the  names  of  the  kings  are  symbols  or 
"  poetic  characters  "  for  the  institutions  of  this  society . 
In  Vico's  judgment,  as  we  have  had  occasion  to  observe, 
the  constitution  of  Servius  Tullius  should  not  be  considered 
the  basis  of  popular  liberty,  as  the  later  Romans  con- 
sidered it  ;  it  was  really  the  basis  of  the  liberty  of  the 
feudal  lords,  since  by  it  the  patricians  granted  to  the 
plebeians  the  bonitary  tenure  of  their  land  together  with 
the  duty  of  paying  rent  to  and  serving  at  their  own 
expense  in  war  themselves,  the  patricians.  And  Junius 
Brutus,  in  driving  out  the  Tarquins  and  replacing  them 
by  two  consuls  or  annual  aristocratic  kings,  restored  to 


200      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

the  Roman  republic  its  primitive  form  ;  that  is  to  say, 
he  delivered  the  lords  from  the  domination  of  their 
tyrants  but  left  the  people  under  the  domination  of  their 
lords. 

The  patricians'  oppression  of  the  plebeians  after  the 
restoration  of  Junius  Brutus  and  the  struggles  and 
resistance  caused  by  it  constitute  the  soul  of  the  new 
development  and  contain  the  secret  of  the  greatness  of 
Rome,  the  "  key  to  universal  Roman  history,"  clams 
historiae  Romanae  universae.  Polybius's  explanation  of 
this  greatness  is  too  vague.  He  describes  it  as  due  to 
the  virtue  or  the  religion  of  the  patricians  and  relates 
the  facts  of  this  virtue  rather  than  their  cause.  Vico 
also  criticises  Machiavelli,  at  one  time  because  he  adduces 
certain  civil  and  military  institutions  as  the  cause  of 
Rome's  greatness  without  investigating  the  cause  of 
those  institutions,  that  is  to  say  the  character  of  Roman 
society  :  at  another  time  for  adducing  what  was  only  a 
partial  cause,  the  high  spirit  of  the  plebeians.  He  thinks 
Plutarch  worst  of  all,  since  envy  of  the  virtue  and  wisdom 
of  Rome  leads  him  to  ascribe  her  greatness  to  fortune. 
The  fact  was  that  Rome  subjugated  the  other  cities  of 
Latium  and  then  Italy  and  the  world  because  her  heroism 
was  still  young,  while  among  the  other  Latin  peoples  it 
had  begun  to  decay.  Thanks  to  this  youthful  vigour 
the  patricians  were  strong  enough  to  preserve  their  order 
and  the  religion  which  formed  its  foundation  and  safe- 
guard (the  nobles,  Vico  observes  at  this  point,  were  always 
and  everywhere  religious,  so  that  the  first  sign  of  contempt 
for  religion  among  them  is  a  symptom  of  national  decad- 
ence) ;  the  plebeians  were  spirited  enough  to  demand  a 
share  in  religion,  auspices  and  all  civil  rights  ;  the  lawyers, 
lastly,  were  wise  enough  to  interpret  the  old  laws  and 
apply  them  to  any  new  case  that  might  arise,  and  strove 
with  all  their  might  to  alter  the  text  of  these  laws  as  little 
and  as  slowly  as  possible.  These  were  the  chief  causes 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  aoi 

of  the  growth  and  permanence  of  the  Roman  empire  ;  for 
in  all  its  political  changes  it  contrived  to  remain  faithful 
to  its  principles.  Prowess  in  war  was  another  result  of  the 
rivalry  of  the  orders ;  since  the  nobles  were  naturally 
consecrated  to  the  safety  of  their  country,  as  the  only 
means  of  preserving  the  civil  privileges  of  their  order, 
and  the  plebeians  accomplished  brilliant  deeds  in  order 
to  prove  themselves  worthy  of  patrician  honours.  And 
when  the  Romans  extended  their  conquests  and  their 
victories  over  the  whole  world,  they  made  use  of  four 
rules  which  they  had  already  applied  to  the  plebeians 
within  Rome  itself.  They  reduced  barbarian  provinces 
to  the  position  of  clients  by  planting  colonies  in  them  : 
they  granted  civilised  provinces  bonitary  tenure  of  their 
land  :  to  Italy  they  gave  the  quiritary  tenure  :  and  to 
the  municipia,  the  towns  which  had  earned  better  treat- 
ment, they  accorded  the  same  equality  with  themselves 
which  the  plebs  had  finally  won. 

The  result  of  the  first  struggles,  in  which  the  point 
at  issue  was  according  to  Vico  the  bonitary  possession 
of  land  (a  right  already  recognised  in  the  constitution 
of  Servius,  but  cancelled  by  the  nobles  in  return  for 
arrears  of  rent),  is  seen  in  the  tribunate,  and  later,  when 
the  plebeians  claimed  the  right  of  quiritary  tenure,  in 
the  laws  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  ratifying  this  plebeian 
victory.  But  the  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables  represented 
at  the  same  time  the  victory  of  written  law,  the  end  of  the 
secrecy  with  which  the  laws  had  been  fenced  round  by  the 
patricians,  who  alone  knew,  understood,  interpreted  and 
therefore  applied  them  as  they  thought  fit.  This  publica- 
tion and  codification  of  a  written  law  cannot  have  been 
benevolently  granted  by  the  patricians  out  of  that  anxiety 
"  not  to  despise  the  wishes  of  the  plebs  "  of  which  Livy 
speaks  ;  rather  they  must  have  resisted  it  with  all  the 
stubbornness  which  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus  describes 
and  expresses  in  the  phrase  "  mores  patrios  servandos, 


202      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

leges  ferri  non  oportere  "  (our  fathers'  customs  must  be 
preserved,  and  laws  must  not  be  passed). 

Later  historians  decorated  the  origin  of  the  Twelve 
Tables  with  various  legends.  They  told,  among  other 
things,  of  the  mission  sent  by  the  decemvirs  to  Athens 
to  bring  back  new  laws :  a  tale  given  by  Livy  and  Diony- 
sius,  but  unknown  to  Polybius  and  discredited  by  Cicero. 
How,  in  the  savage  aloofness  of  primitive  nations,  between 
whom  oral  communication  could  only  have  been  instituted 
by  the  necessities  of  warfare,  alliances  and  commerce, 
could  the  fame  of  Solon's  wisdom  have  crossed  the  seas 
from  distant  Attica  to  Rome  ?  How  could  the  Romans 
of  that  time  have  possessed  such  accurate  knowledge 
of  the  quality  of  Athenian  law  as  to  believe  it  capable  of 
setting  at  rest  the  strife  between  their  plebeians  and  their 
nobles  ?  How  could  ambassadors  have  travelled  between 
Greece  and  those  Romans  whom  seventy-two  years  later 
the  Greeks  of  Tarentum  could  still  maltreat  as  strangers  ? 
And  what  shall  we  say  of  ambassadors  who  returned 
carrying  with  them  the  Greek  laws  from  Athens  but 
without  knowing  what  they  meant ;  so  that  but  for  the 
coincidence  by  which  Hermodorus  the  pupil  of  Heraclitus, 
an  exile  from  his  country,  happened  to  be  in  Rome,  the 
Romans  would  have  been  unable  to  make  any  use  of  this 
unintelligible  and  inaccessible  treasure  ?  Again,  how 
could  Hermodorus  have  translated  the  laws  into  Latin 
of  such  purity  that  Diodorus  Siculus  pronounced  it 
devoid  of  the  slightest  taint  of  Hellenism,  and  with  a 
perfection  unattained  by  any  subsequent  writer  of  any 
period  in  a  translation  from  the  Greek  ?  How  did  he 
contrive  to  clothe  Greek  ideas  in  Latin  words  so  appro- 
priate (for  instance,  auctoritas]  that  Greeks,  Dio  Cassius 
among  them,  declare  that  their  own  language  has  no 
corresponding  words  by  which  to  explain  them  ?  Hera- 
clitus's  letter  to  Hermodorus  must  have  been  conveyed 
by  the  same  mail  that  served  Pythagoras  in  his  distant 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  203 

voyages  up  and  down  the  world  :  it  is,  in  fact,  an  imposture 
of  the  first  quality,  and  the  whole  story  of  the  Athenian 
origin  of  these  laws  is  due  to  the  arrogance  of  scholars, 
who  derived  them  first  from  the  other  Latin  peoples 
(such  as  the  Aequi),  then  from  the  Greek  cities  of  Italy, 
then  from  Sparta  and  finally  from  Athens,  with  whose 
name,  thanks  to  the  renown  of  the  Athenian  philosophers, 
they  were  at  last  satisfied.  No  doubt,  the  laws  of  the 
Twelve  Tables  present  resemblances  not  only  to  Athenian 
or  Spartan  laws  but  to  those  of  various  nations,  the 
Mosaic  code  among  others  ;  but  this  is  due  to  the  uni- 
formity of  national  history.  No  doubt,  the  decemvirs 
were  in  antiquity  supposed  to  have  originated  laws  bearing 
clear  traces  of  Greek  influence,  such  as  that  prohibiting 
the  Greek  style  of  mourning  at  funerals  :  but  this  is 
because  as  we  have  seen  the  decemviral  legislation,  like 
the  names  of  the  various  kings,  became  a  "  poetic  char- 
acter," and  to  it  were  referred  all  laws  later  recorded  in 
the  public  archives  which  tended  to  the  equalisation  of 
liberty.  But  the  original  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables, 
with  its  primitive  rudeness,  inhumanity,  cruelty  and 
ferocity,  which  agrees  so  ill  with  the  period  of  highly- 
developed  civilisation  at  Athens,  is  a  document  of  the 
greatest  value  for  the  ancient  natural  law  of  the  Latin 
peoples,  and  the  customs  which  had  existed  among  them 
from  the  age  of  Saturn. 

Quiritary  tenure  of  land  and  a  written  code  of  law 
once  gained,  the  struggle  recommenced  over  the  question 
of  the  right  of  marriage.  The  true  meaning  of  this  contest 
has  been  lost  among  the  absurdities  written  on  the  subject 
by  the  ancient  historians  themselves,  in  the  belief  that 
its  basis  was  the  desire  on  the  part  of  the  plebeians  (who 
were  little  more  than  wretched  and  common  slaves)  to  be 
allowed  to  form  connexions  with  the  nobles.  This  error 
has  made  Roman  history  even  less  credible  than  the 
legendary  history  of  Greece ;  for  if  we  do  not  know  the 


204      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

meaning  of  the  latter,  the  former  is  in  opposition  to  the 
true  order  of  human  desires.  It  shows  us  a  plebs  aspiring 
first  to  nobility,  secondly  to  offices  and  magistracies,  and 
finally  to  wealth  :  whereas  men  desire  first  of  all  wealth, 
then  offices  in  the  state,  and  lastly  nobility.  What  the 
Roman  plebs  really  claimed  was  not  "  connubia  cum 
patribus  "  but  "  connubia  patrum  "  :  not  the  right  of 
connexion  by  marriage  with  the  nobles — a  claim  which 
they  would  not  have  wished  to  make,  and  was  at  bottom 
unimportant  —  but  the  right  of  contracting  solemn 
marriages  as  the  nobles  did.  For  without  such  solemn 
marriages,  without  privilege  of  the  auspices,  the  plebeians 
were  in  fact  unable  to  enjoy  the  quiritary  tenure  of  land 
and  to  transmit  it  to  their  families,  deprived  as  they 
were  of  descent,  kindred  and  relatives.  The  demand  for 
connubia  was,  in  a  word,  simply  equivalent  to  a  demand 
for  the  rights  of  citizens,  and  it  was  satisfied  by  the 
Canuleian  law. 

The  next  demand  of  the  plebeians  was  for  privileges 
depending  on  public  rights.  Of  these  they  gained  first 
the  impenum  together  with  the  consulship,  and  lastly 
the  offices  of  priest  and  pontifex,  which  carried  with  them 
knowledge  of  the  law.  In  .this  way  the  system  of  seig- 
neurial  liberty  planned  by  Servius  Tullius  grew  into  a 
system  of  popular  liberty,  and  the  census,  which  was 
originally  paid  to  the  patricians,  was  paid  hereafter  into 
the  public  treasury,  out  of  which  the  expenses  of  the 
plebeians  in  war  were  paid.  The  tribunes  now  proceeded 
to  demand  the  power  of  legislation  ;  for  the  previous  laws, 
the  Horatian  and  Hortensian,  had  not  made  plebiscites 
binding  on  the  whole  people,  except  upon  the  two  special 
occasions  which  led  to  the  secession  of  the  plebs  to  the 
Aventine  and  Janiculum  respectively.  This  new  victory, 
which  established  the  superiority  of  the  plebs  and  trans- 
formed the  aristocratic  into  a  popular  republic,  was  the 
Publilian  law  due  to  the  Dictator  Publilius  Philo  and 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  203 

decreeing  that  plebiscites  should  "  be  binding  on  all  the 
Quirites "  (omnes  quirites  tenerent).  The  authority  of 
the  senate  came  out  of  the  struggle  somewhat  impaired, 
for  while  formerly  the  fathers  had  acted  as  "  auctores  "  for 
the  deliberations  of  the  people,  they  were  now  the  pro- 
posers of  law  to  the  people,  which  the  latter  then  approved 
according  to  the  formula  submitted  to  them  by  the  senate, 
or  else  "  antiquated "  the  proposal  (antique,  to  vote 
against  a  measure)  and  decided  to  make  no  innovation. 
Besides  this,  the  plebs  won  the  last  office  to  be  conceded 
to  them,  that  of  censor.  The  Petelian  law,  a  few  years 
later,  abolished  the  last  remnant  of  feudalism,  the  bond 
(nexus)  which  made  the  plebeians  the  bondmen  of  the 
nobles  for  debt  and  often  compelled  them  to  spend  their 
lives  working  in  their  private  prisons. 

Some  time  later,  when  the  division  between  patriciate 
and  plebs  with  the  corresponding  comitia  curiata  and 
tributa  was  replaced  by  Fabius  Maximus's  division  accord- 
ing to  the  property  of  citizens,  who  were  now  grouped 
into  three  classes  of  senators,  knights  and  plebeians,  the 
order  of  the  nobles  disappeared  entirely:  "senator" 
and  "  knight "  were  no  longer  synonymous  with 
"patrician,"  nor  "plebeian"  with  "base-born."  The 
Senate  however  preserved  sovereign  dominion  over  the 
finances  of  the  Roman  Empire,  though  the  Empire  itself 
had  passed  to  the  plebeians ;  and  thanks  to  the  so- 
called  "  senatusconsultum  ultimum  "  it  maintained  this 
dominion  by  force  of  arms  as  long  as  Rome  remained 
a  popular  republic.  Whenever  the  people  attempted 
to  take  it  into  their  own  hands,  the  Senate  armed  the 
Consuls,  who  forthwith  declared  traitors  and  put  to 
death  plebeian  tribunes  who  had  originated  these 
attempts.  This  may  be  explained  as  a  right  of  feudal 
sovereignty  subject  to  a  higher  sovereign,  a  view  con- 
firmed by  the  language  of  Scipio  Nasica  when  he  armed 
the  people  against  Tiberius  Gracchus  :  "  whoever  wishes 


206      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

for  the  safety  of  the  republic,  let  him  follow  the  consul  " 
(qui  rempublicam  salvam  velit,  consulem  sequatur}.  And 
indeed,  once  the  road  to  office  was  opened  by  law  to  the 
multitude  which  rules  in  a  popular  republic,  there  was 
nothing  left  in  time  of  peace  but  to  contest  its  rule  not 
by  laws  but  by  force  of  arms,  and  for  those  in  power  to 
pass  laws  for  self-enrichment  like  the  Gracchan  agrarian 
measures,  resulting  at  once  in  civil  wars  at  home  and 
unjust  wars  abroad. 

With  the  triumph  of  the  plebs  and  the  change  of  con- 
stitution from  aristocratic  to  popular,  the  whole  face  of 
society  changed.  In  the  first  place,  the  aspect  of  the 
family  changed.  Here,  during  the  rule  of  the  patriciate, 
testamentary  succession  was  admitted  only  at  a  late 
date  and  was  easily  cancelled,  in  order  to  keep  wealth  in 
patrician  hands  :  kindred  even  in  the  seventh  degree 
excluded  the  emancipated  son  from  the  paternal  heritage  : 
emancipation  had  the  effect  of  a  penalty  :  legitimising 
was  not  allowed :  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  a  woman 
could  inherit.  But  in  the  democratic  society,  since  for  the 
plebs  wealth,  strength  and  power  all  depended  on  the 
number  of  their  children,  family  feeling  began  to  grow  up, 
and  the  praetors  began  to  consider  its  claims  and  to 
satisfy  them  by  means  of  the  "  bonorum  possessiones," 
thus  remedying  the  faults  or  shortcomings  of  wills  and 
facilitating  the  diffusion  of  wealth,  the  only  thing  desired 
by  the  common  people. 

A  change  took  place,  again,  in  the  meaning  of  the 
institutions  of  property.  The  civil  tenure  was  no  longer 
a  matter  of  public  right,  but  was  dispersed  among  the 
various  private  tenures  of  the  citizens  now  forming  the 
body  of  the  popular  state.  "  Eminent  "  tenure  no  longer 
signifies  the  strongest  kind  of  tenure,  unencumbered  by 
any  actual  charge,  even  a  public  charge,  but  applies 
simply  to  an  estate  free  from  any  private  charge. 
Quiritary  tenure  is  no  longer  that  of  which  the  noble 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  207 

was  feudal  lord  and  under  the  obligation  to  aid  his  client, 
the  plebeian,  if  ousted  from  it :  it  has  become  a  private 
civil  tenure,  capable  of  being  defended  by  a  civil  suit  as 
opposed  to  the  bonitary  which  could  be  maintained  by 
possession  only. 

The  forms  of  legal  process  were  pruned  of  the  luxurious 
growth  of  fictions,  solemn  formulae  and  symbolic  acts, 
simplified  and  rationalised  :  the  intellect,  the  thought  of 
the  legislator  was  brought  into  play  and  the  citizens 
conformed  to  an  idea  of  a  common  rational  utility,  under- 
stood as  spiritual  in  value.  Causes,  which  were  originally 
formulae  safeguarded  by  accurate  and  precise  language, 
became  affairs  or  negotiations  solemnised  by  agreement 
and,  in  the  case  of  transference  of  tenure,  by  natural 
tradition  ;  and  it  was  only  in  contracts  said  to  be  com- 
pleted by  word  of  mouth,  that  is  to  say  in  stipulations, 
that  the  safeguards  remained  "  causes "  in  the  strict 
ancient  meaning  of  the  word.  Thus  the  certitude  of  the 
law,  when  the  human  reason  was  fully  developed,  passed 
into  the  truth  of  ideas  determined  by  the  circumstances  of 
fact,  a  "  formula  devoid  of  any  particular  form  "  (formula 
naturae,  as  Varro  calls  it)  which,  like  a  light,  informs  in 
all  the  minutest  details  of  their  surface  the  details  of  fact 
over  which  it  extends.  In  popular  republics  the  ruling 
principle  is  the  aequum  bonum,  natural  equity. 

The  harsh  punishments  of  the  periods  of  domestic 
monarchy  and  heroic  society  (the  laws  of  the  Twelve 
Tables  condemned  those  who  set  fire  to  another's  crops 
to  be  burnt  alive,  perjurers  to  be  thrown  from  the  Tarpeian 
rock,  and  insolvent  debtors  to  be  cut  in  pieces  while  living) 
were  replaced  by  milder  penalties,  since  the  multitude, 
whose  members  are  weak,  is  naturally  disposed  to 
clemency. 

Laws,  which  under  the  aristocracy  were  few,  inflexible 
and  religiously  observed,  multiplied  under  the  democracy 
and  became  liable  to  change  and  modification.  The 


208      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

Spartans,  who  preserved  their  aristocracy,  said  that  at 
Athens  they  had  many  laws  and  wrote  them  ;  at  Sparta 
few,  but  they  obeyed  them.  The  Roman  plebs,  like 
the  Athenian,  passed  new  laws  every  day,  and  the  attempt 
by  Sulla,  the  leader  of  the  noble  party,  to  reduce  them 
by  the  institution  of  "  quaestiones  perpetuae  "  or  permanent 
courts  was  in  vain,  for  after  his  time  laws  were  again 
multiplied. 

War  itself,  which  was  under  the  aristocratic  republics 
very  cruel  and  resulted  in  the  destruction  of  conquered 
towns  and  the  reduction  of  the  vanquished  to  the  condition 
of  labourers  scattered  over  the  country-side  and  cultivat- 
ing it  on  behalf  of  the  victors,  was  mitigated  by  the  popular 
republics,  which  while  they  deprived  the  conquered  of 
the  rights  of  heroic  society  left  them  in  possession  of  the 
natural  rights  of  the  human  race.  Empires  grew,  since  a 
popular  republic  is  much  more  adapted  to  conquest  than 
an  aristocratic,  and  a  monarchy  most  of  all. 

But  with  all  this  humanisation  of  customs,  the  power 
of  wise  rule,  political  virtue,  diminished.  The  ancient 
patricians  enforced  a  rigid  respect  for  law ;  and  each, 
possessing  a  large  share  of  the  public  utility,  set  his  own 
minor  personal  interests  below  this  greater  particular 
interest,  guaranteed  as  it  was  by  the  state.  Hence  all 
courageously  defended  and  wisely  consulted  for  the  good 
of  the  state.  In  a  popular  state  on  the  other  hand  since 
the  citizens  controlled  the  state  property  by  dividing  it 
among  themselves  into  as  many  small  portions  as  there 
were  citizens  in  the  body  of  the  people,  and  through  the 
causes  which  produced  that  form  of  state,  ease,  paternal 
affection,  conjugal  love  and  desire  of  life,  men  were  led 
to  consider  the  smallest  details  favourable  to  their  own 
private  interest ;  that  is  to  regard  nothing  but  the  aequum 
bonum,  the  only  interest  of  which  a  multitude  is  capable. 

At  this  point  arises  spontaneously  a  new  form  of 
government,  which  has  long  been  preparing  and  has  now 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  209 

become    inevitable,    namely    monarchy.     The    ordinary 
political  writers  make  monarchy  originate,  without  any 
of  the  numerous  and  complex  causes  which  are  necessary 
to  produce  it,  at  the  very  outset  of  human  history,  "  as 
a  frog,"  says  Vico,  "  is  born  of  a  summer  shower."    Still 
less  did  it  originate  artificially  by  the  royal  law  which 
Tribonian  believes  to  have  deprived  the  Roman  people 
of  its  free  and  sovereign  power  and  conferred  it  upon 
Octavius  Augustus.     The  law  which  brought  monarchy 
into  being  was  a  natural  law  whose  formula  of  eternal 
validity  is  as  follows  :   when  in  a  popular  republic  every 
one  seeks  his  private  interest  only  and  presses  the  public 
forces  into  its  service  at  risk  of  destruction  to  the  state, 
to  preserve  the  latter  from  ruin  a  man  must  arise,  as 
Augustus  did  at  Rome  (who  as  Tacitus  says  "  received 
under  his  sovereign  power  the  whole  state,  worn  out  with 
civil  wars,  taking  the  title  of  Princeps  "  :  qui  cuncta  bellis 
civilibus  fessa  nomine  principis  sub  imperium  accepit)  : 
a  single  man,  who  by  force  of  arms  takes  in  hand  all  the 
affairs  of  the  state  and  leaves  his  subjects  to  look  after 
their  own  affairs  or  after  any  public  business  he  may 
entrust  to  them  ;  surrounding  himself  with  a  small  number 
of  statesmen  as  a  cabinet  to  discuss  public  questions  or 
principles  of  civil  equity.     Such  a  monarch  is  welcomed 
by  nobles  and  plebeians  alike  :   by  the  nobles,  who  after 
having  been  already  humiliated  by  their  subjection  to 
plebeian  rule  abandon  their   ancient   aristocratic   claim 
to  sovereignty  and  think  only  of  securing  a  comfortable 
life ;  and  by  the  plebeians,  who  after  an  experiment  in 
anarchy  or  unbridled  demagogy  (than  which  no  tyranny 
is  worse,  since  it  produces  as  many  tyrants  as  there  are 
bold  and  dissolute  men  in  the  state)  are  led  by  their  own 
misfortunes  to  welcome  peace  and  protection. 

Monarchy  is  then  a  new  form  of  popular  government. 
In  order  that  a  powerful  man  may  become  sovereign,  it 
is  necessary  that  the  people  shall  take  his  side,  and  that 

p 


210       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

he  should  rule  in  a  popular  manner ;  making  all  his 
subjects  equal,  humiliating  the  great  to  protect  the 
multitude  against  their  oppression,  keeping  the  people 
satisfied  and  content  as  regards  the  necessaries  of  life 
and  the  enjoyment  of  natural  liberty,  and  employing  a 
well-balanced  system  of  concessions  and  privileges  granted 
sometimes  to  whole  classes  (in  which  case  they  are  called 
"  privileges  of  liberty  ")  sometimes  to  particular  persons, 
by  promoting  into  a  higher  class  men  of  unusual  merit 
and  exceptional  virtues. 

In  monarchy,  a  "  humane  "  government  no  less  than 
democracy,  the  process  of  humanisation  or  softening  of 
customs  and  laws,  already  begun  under  popular  republics, 
still  continues.  The  rigid  bonds  of  the  patriarchal  family 
and  kinship  relax  further.  The  Emperors,  who  tended 
to  be  overshadowed  by  the  splendours  of  the  nobility, 
made  efforts  to  promote  the  rights  of  human  nature 
common  to  nobles  and  plebeians.  Augustus  strove  to 
safeguard  the  trusteeships  by  which  formerly  property 
had  passed  to  persons  incapable  of  inheritance  thanks 
only  to  the  conscientiousness  of  the  injured  heir  ;  he 
transformed  such  understandings  from  a  right  into  a 
necessity,  by  obliging  heirs  to  execute  them.  A  number 
of  senatusconsulta  followed  which  placed  cognati  (re- 
lations generally)  on  a  level  with  agnati  (relations  through 
the  father).  Finally,  Justinian  abolished  the  difference 
between  property  inherited  and  property  in  the  hands  of 
trustees,  confused  the  Falcidian  quarter  with  the  Trebellian 
and  put  cognati  and  agnati  on  precisely  the  same  footing 
as  regards  inheritance  "  ab  intestate."  The  latest  Roman 
law  was  so  entirely  on  the  side  of  testaments  that,  while 
originally  these  could  be  broken  for  the  slightest  cause, 
they  now  had  to  be  interpreted  in  the  way  most  adapted 
to  secure  their  validity.  Once  the  "  cyclopean  "  right  of  the 
father  over  the  persons  of  his  children  had  disappeared, 
his  economic  right  over  property  acquired  by  them  dis- 


THE  HISTORY  OF  ROME  211 

appeared  also  ;   and  hence  the  emperors  first  introduced 

the  peculium  castrense  (property  obtained  during  military 

service)  to  attract  young  men  to  war,  then  the  peculium 

quasicastrense,  to  attract  them  into  the  praetorian  guard, 

and  finally  to  satisfy  those  who  were  neither  soldiers  nor 

scholars  the  peculium  adventitium.    They  deprived  the 

patria  potestas  of  its  influence  over  adoptions,  now  no 

longer  restricted  to  the  small  circle  of  relations  ;    they 

uniformly    countenanced    formal     adoption     (arrogatio) 

which  was  somewhat  difficult  owing  to  the  difficulty  of  a 

father's  becoming  a  subordinate  member  of  another  family; 

they  considered  emancipation  as  a  benefit  and  gave  to 

legitimization  "  by  a  subsequent  marriage  "  all  the  efficacy 

of  solemn  wedlock.     The  imperium   paternum,    as    an 

arrogant   title   seeming   to   detract   from   the   imperial 

majesty,  was  altered  into  patria  potestas.     The  humane 

tendencies  of  the  monarchs  extended  moreover  to  that 

part  of  the  ancient  "  family  "  which  consisted  of  slaves  : 

for  the  emperors  restrained  the  cruelty  of  masters  towards 

these,  and  benefited  them  by  increasing  the  force  and 

decreasing  the  solemnity  of  manumission  ;    and  citizen 

rights,  which  were  given  originally  only  to  distinguished 

foreigners  who  had  deserved  well  of  the  Roman  people, 

were  granted  to  every  one  born  in  Rome,  even  of  a  slave 

father  provided  his  mother  were  free  or  enfranchised. 

Punishments  were  also  made  milder,  and  the  monarchs 

distinguished     themselves     by     the     gracious     title     of 

"  clement."     The  letter  of  the  law  always  tended  to  be 

more  freely  interpreted  in  the  light  of  natural  equity, 

and  it  may  be  said  that  Constantine  absolutely  cancelled 

the  letter  when  he  laid  down  the  principle  that  any 

particular   motive   of   equity   should   override   the   law. 

Thus  was  attained  the  precise  opposite  of  the  "  privilegia 

ne  irroganto  "  of  the  Twelve  Tables  ("  that  no  exceptions 

be  made  ")  :    all  privileges  were  exceptions  to  the  law 

dictated  by  some  particular  merit  in  the  facts  which 


212      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

lifted  them  out  of  the  sphere  of  legal  generalisations. 
The  restriction  of  rights  to  particular  peoples  was  by 
degrees  abolished  :  under  Caracalla  the  whole  Roman 
world  was  converted  into  a  single  Rome,  since  great 
monarchs  desire  the  whole  world  to  become  one  city, 
according  to  the  thought  of  Alexander  the  Great,  when 
he  said  that  for  him  all  the  world  was  a  single  city 
of  which  his  phalanx  was  the  citadel.  The  praetor's 
edict  gives  place,  under  Hadrian,  to  the  "  perpetual 
edict  "  of  Salvius  Julianus,  almost  exclusively  composed 
of  provincial  edicts. 

With  monarchy,  the  natural  law  of  races  gives  place 
to  the  natural  law  of  nations;  and  hence  this  political, 
social  and  juridical  form  is  the  most  suitable  to  human 
nature  at  its  fullest  rational  development.  Here  too, 
as  we  have  already  had  occasion  to  remark,  we  reach  again 
after  a  long  process  the  unity  which  existed  in  the  person 
of  the  primitive  father  under  domestic  monarchy  ;  and 
the  course  of  national  history  must  be  considered  as 
absolutely  complete.  To  go  further  is  impossible  :  the 
only  possibility,  at  this  stage  of  the  highest  human 
civilisation  and  refinement,  is  corruption,  the  return  of 
barbarism  as  a  "  barbarism  of  reflection  "  and  a  relapse 
into  a  kind  of  new  state  of  nature,  to  return  once  more 
into  a  new  and  heroic  barbarism. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  I  THE  MIDDLE  AGES 

OF  this  kind  of  "  reflux  "  Vico  mentions  and  examines 
only  one  instance  :  the  period  of  European  history  which 
had  in  his  own  days  for  the  first  time  been  marked  out 
definitely  by  historians  and  given  the  name  (though  Vico 
does  not  use  it)  of  the  "  Middle  Ages." 

That  this  was  a  period  of  decadence  and  barbarism  was 
certainly  not  a  new  thought  for  consciousness :  for, 
especially  in  the  humanistic  period,  a  general  feeling  of 
estrangement  and  repulsion  had  been  felt  towards  these 
centuries  of  "  middle  and  low  Latinity  "  in  which  the 
treasures  of  the  classical  literatures  were  neglected  and 
scattered,  and  humane  studies  either  lost  their  vigour  or 
disappeared  completely.  This  consciousness,  general  on 
the  part  of  cultivated  Europe,  was  especially  full  and 
vivid  in  Italy ;  for  that  country  could  never  forget  that 
though  for  other  peoples  the  Middle  Ages  had  seen  the 
rise  of  their  fortunes,  power  and  civilisation,  for  her  they 
had  meant  the  end  of  Rome's  greatness,  the  humiliation 
of  her  name  before  the  arrogant  Vandal,  Visigoth  and 
Lombard,  the  devastation  of  rich  cities,  and  the  destruc- 
tion of  majestic  monuments  whose  miserable  wreckage 
could  be  seen  on  every  hand.  Machiavelli  had  opened 
his  Histories  with  a  famous  and  striking  picture  of  the 
general  change  which  followed  the  fall  of  the  Western 
Empire.  But  to  pass  in  review  the  ruins  or  to  collect 

213 


2i4       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA    VICO 

the  antiquities  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  not  the  way  to 
penetrate  into  the  spirit  of  the  period,  any  more  than  to 
note  a  man's  faults  and  the  marks  which  distinguish  him 
from  another  is  the  same  thing  as  understanding  the  soul 
of  either.  Vico  was  the  first  to  understand  the  soul  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  that  is  to  say,  the  mental,  social  and  cultural 
constitution  of  the  period. 

Though  living  in  a  part  of  Italy  rich  not  only  in  docu- 
ments but  in  survivals  of  the  Middle  Age,  Vico  confesses 
that  this  second  period  of  barbarism  is  much  more  obscure 
to  him  than  the  first,  and  that  it  is  only  the  first  that  has 
enabled  him  to  throw  light  upon  the  second.  This  he 
expressed  by  the  mere  fact  that  he  named  the  period  "  the 
second  barbarism,"  or  the  "  return "  or  "  reflux "  of 
barbarism,  and  thus  considered  it  as  an  instance  of  his 
ideal  law  of  reflux.  The  Middle  Ages  seemed  to  him  both 
a  representation  of  the  primitive  conditions  of  life,  and  in 
consequence  a  reproduction  of  the  social  process  develop- 
ing out  of  them.  It  was  a  view  as  original  as  it  was  rich 
in  truth  :  and  it  is  no  objection  to  it  to  say  that  Vico 
reveals  the  generic  characters  rather  than  the  particular 
traits  of  the  Middle  Ages,  because  we  know  that  the 
problem  he  set  before  himself  was  precisely  the  investiga- 
tion of  generic  characters  or  uniformities,  and  that  he 
avoided  history  properly  so  called  in  order  to  escape  a 
dilemma  between  science  and  faith,  between  the  purely 
immanental  conception  of  history,  excluding  revelation 
and  miracle,  and  the  purely  transcendent  conception, 
miraculous  and  therefore  difficult  to  treat  in  a  scientific 
manner.  Even  in  our  own  times,  it  is  a  fact  worth  noticing 
that  we  have  seen  a  recrudescence  of  this  attempt  to 
harmonise  religion  and  history  by  abstracting  from  the 
individual  aspect  of  events  and  reducing  history  to  a 
history  of  institutions  and  uniformities.1  In  this  position 

1  See  my  preface  to  Sorel's  Reflections  on  Violence  (Italian  tr.,  Bari, 
19°9),  PP-  xxii-xxvii. 


THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  "5 

assumed  by  the  problem  in  Vice's  mind  we  may  see  the 
reason  for  the  fact,  which  some  have  thought  very  strange 
in  a  Catholic,  that  he  lays  no  stress  on  Christianity  and 
when  he  encounters  it  at  the  outset  of  the  Middle  Ages 
dismisses  it  in  a  few  words  ;  saying  that  God  having  by 
superhuman  ways  shown  clearly  the  truth  of  the  Christian 
religion,  when  he  opposed  the  virtue  of  the  martyrs 
the  power  of  Rome,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  Fathers,  to- 
gether  with  the  miracles,  to  the  empty  wisdom  of  Gree. 
and  knowing  that  armed  nations  must  arise  on  every 
hand  ready  to  fight  for  the  divinity  of  that  religions 
author,  permitted  the  birth  of  a  new  order  o   civilisation 
among  the  nations,  in  order  that  the  true  religion  might 
be  established  according  to  the  natural  course  « 

affairs 

We  must  be  content  then  with  the  resemblances 
observed  by  Vico  between  mediaeval  society  and  that  of 
the  early  centuries  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  not  take 
offence  if  his  exemplifications  and  proofs  very  often  seem 
fallacious  and  fanciful.  His  main  historical  thought  as 
we  know  already  is  robust  enough  to  pass  over  the  errors 
or  to  live  in  the  midst  of  them  unimpaired. 

We  see  (to  reconstruct  his  story  or  picture,  with  some 
rearrangement)  in  the  Middle  Ages  groups  of  dwellings 
everywhere  springing  up  on  the  mountains,  each  dominated 
bv  its  fortress  as  in  the  divine  age  of  the     cyclopes     ; 
for  the  unhappy  people,  ground  down  by  the  violence 
barbarian  invasions  and  intestine  strife,  had  no  other 
means  of  defence.    The  most  ancient  cities  built  in  the 
Middle  Ages  and  almost  all  capitals  of  states  are  as  a 
matter  of  fact  placed  upon  heights  ;  all  new  seigneur 
formed  at  the  time  were  called  "  castella  "  by  the  Italians  ; 
and  this  perhaps  is  also  the  reason  why  nobles  were  called 
men  "  born  in  a  high  or  conspicuous  position      (summo, 
illustri  loco  naii)  while  the  plebeians  living  in  the  plains 
below  were  "  born  in  a  low  or  obscure  place  "  (two,  obscuro 


216      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

loco  nati).  We  find  asyla  or  sanctuaries  again  open 
especially  with  the  ecclesiastical  lords,  who  were  in  humanity 
in  advance  of  their  savage  times ;  here  took  refuge  the 
oppressed  and  the  terrified,  to  seek  protection  for  person 
or  property.  Hence  in  Germany,  a  country  which  must 
have  been  wilder  than  the  other  parts  of  Europe,  there 
remained  almost  more  ecclesiastical  than  secular  lords. 
A  famous  example  of  these  political  formations  was  the 
Abbey  of  St.  Laurence  at  A  versa  in  the  kingdom  of  Naples, 
with  which  was  incorporated  that  of  St.  Laurence  at  Capua. 
This  monastery  governed  either  directly  or  by  abbots  or 
monks  dependent  upon  it  no  less  than  a  hundred  and  ten 
churches  in  Campania,  Samnium,  Apulia  and  the  ancient 
Calabria,  from  the  river  Volturnus  to  the  gulf  of  Tarentum ; 
the  abbots  of  St.  Laurence  were  lords  or  barons  of  almost 
the  whole  of  this  country.  The  small  chapels  which  they 
built  in  mountainous  and  remote  places  for  the  celebration 
of  the  mass  and  other  religious  offices  became  natural 
sanctuaries  for  the  population,  and  they  built  their  houses 
round  them :  and  this  is  the  reason  why  in  Europe  so 
many  cities,  lands  and  castles  bear  the  names  of  saints, 
and  why  the  churches  are  the  most  ancient  monuments  of 
this  period.  Consequently  we  also  find  feudalism,  not 
establishing  itself  in  Europe  for  the  first  time,  but  appearing 
once  more.  It  has  been  mistakenly  believed  to  be  a  relic 
of  Roman  law  after  its  destruction  by  the  barbarians 
(such  is  the  theory  of  Oldenorp  and  all  other  jurists) 
whereas  really  Roman  law  itself  arose  out  of  the  ruins  of 
the  feudalism  of  early  Latin  barbarism,  and  mediaeval 
feudalism  was  not  a  new  law  of  the  European  nations, 
but  a  very  ancient  law  renewed  by  the  last  barbarism. 
This  feudalism  is  far  from  being  the  "  vile  matter " 
which  Cujas  calls  it :  it  is  a  heroic  matter,  one  worthy 
to  be  celebrated  by  the  most  erudite  and  profound  learning 
of  Greece  and  Rome.  And  to  what  is  it  due,  if  not  to  this 
essential  unity  of  nature,  that  the  choicest  expressions  of 


THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  217 

Roman  law,  which  Cujas  himself  allows  to  mitigate  the 
barbarism  of  feudalistic  learning,  are  so  precisely  adequate 
to  express  the  properties  and  attributes  of  the  system 
that  no  better  terminology  could  be  desired  ? 

With  the  Middle  Ages,  then,  we  return  to  the  funda- 
mental division  between  heroes  and  slaves,  between 
"  viri  "  or  "  barons  "("  varones  "  is  the  word  still  used 
for  men,  "  viri,"  in  Spanish)  and  mere  "  homines  "  as  the 
vassals  were  called  :  between  "  patres  "  or  "  patrons  " 
and  serfs.  The  learned  students  of  feudalism  who  trans- 
late "feudum"  by  "clientela"  are  really  giving  something 
much  more  than  a  good  linguistical  equivalent ;  they  are 
unawares  giving  a  historical  definition  of  the  feoff.  The 
first  feoffs  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  necessarily  personal, 
like  the  first  clientelae  of  Romulus  :  a  form  of  vassalage 
still  extant  in  Vico's  time  in  the  north,  especially  in  Poland, 
where  the  "  kmet"  were  a  kind  of  slaves  who  were  often  used 
as  stakes  in  their  lord's  games,  and  passed  with  their 
families  into  the  hands  of  the  winner.  Then  came  rustic 
feoffs,  real  in  character  and  consisting  in  uncultivated 
land  assigned  by  the  victors  to  the  conquered  for  their 
sustenance,  while  they  themselves  kept  the  cultivated 
land  :  these  feoffs  were  called  by  the  feudalists,  with  a 
new  elegance  of  Latinity  and  an  equally  sound  historical 
truth,  "  beneficia."  The  ancient  "  nexi  "  were  the  new 
"liege"  or  bound  men,  who  were  compelled  to  join  in 
all  the  friendships  and  quarrels  of  their  lord,  and  supplied 
what  in  Rome  was  called  "  opera  militaris,"  and  in  the 
Middle  Ages  "  militare  servitium."  The  feudal  bond 
extended  itself  to  larger  political  relations,  and  just  as 
conquered  kings  became  allies  or  socii  of  Rome  and 
"  upheld  the  majesty  of  the  Roman  people,"  so  there 
were  sovereign  feoffs  subordinated  to  higher  sovereignties 
Whose  representatives,  the  great  kings  and  lords  of  large 
kingdoms  and  numerous  provinces,  took  the  title  of 
"  majesty." 


ai8      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

Republics  became  aristocratic  once  more  in  government 
if  not  in  constitution  :  this  is  admitted  by  political  writers, 
among  others  by  Bodin,  who  even  says  that  his  own 
kingdom  of  France  was  purely  aristocratic  in  constitution 
under  the  Merovingian  and  Capetian  dynasties.  Till  the 
end  of  the  sixteenth  century  living  witnesses  to  the  past 
remained  in  the  aristocratic  kingdoms  of  Sweden  and 
Denmark ;  and  Poland,  mentioned  above,  preserved  the 
same  constitution  down  to  Vico's  own  time.  The  first 
state  parliaments  of  Europe  must  have  consisted  like 
Romulus's  senate  of  the  elders  of  the  nobility  (seniores, 
hence  seigneurs)  ;  and  were  armed  courts  of  barons  or 
peers  like  the  comitia  curiata  of  old.  In  these  parliaments 
were  decided  feudal  causes  concerning  rights  or  successions 
or  the  devolution  of  feoffs  through  felony  or  default  of 
heirs  :  which  causes,  confirmed  many  times  by  these 
judgments,  formed  the  customs  of  feudalism.  Vico  saw 
a  relic  of  these  parliaments  in  the  Sacred  Royal  Council 
at  Naples,  the  president  of  which  assumed  the  title  of 
"  Sacred  Royal  Majesty,"  as  the  councillors  did  the  title 
of  "  milites,"  and  whose  sentences  admitted  of  no  appeal 
to  any  other  tribunal,  but  only  a  request  for  revision  by 
the  Council  itself. 

The  governments,  beside  being  aristocratic,  were 
enveloped  in  an  atmosphere  of  religion  to  such  an  extent 
that  not  only  were  bishops  and  abbots  very  often,  as  we 
saw,  feudatories,  but  feudatories  and  sovereigns  adorned 
themselves  freely  with  religious  insignia  ;  Catholic  kings 
everywhere,  in  order  to  defend  the  Christian  religion 
whose  protectors  they  were,  wore  the  dalmatic  of  the 
diaconate,  consecrated  their  persons  (whence  the  title 
"  Sacred  Royal  Majesty  "  ),  and  took  rank  in  the  church, 
as  Hugh  Capet  took  the  title  of  Count  and  Abbot  of 
Paris  ;  thus  as  we  see  from  the  earliest  documents  the 
French  lords  called  themselves  dukes  and  abbots  or  counts 
and  abbots  simultaneously.  These  early  Christian  kings 


THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  aig 

were  the  first  to  institute  armed  religious  orders,  by  the 
help  of  which  they  defended  Catholicism  against  Arians, 
Saracens  and  other  infidels.  "  Pur  a  et  pia  bella  "  returned 
once  more  as  in  the  heroic  period  ;  the  globe  surmounted 
by  the  cross  worn  by  the  Christian  potentates  on  their 
crowns  recalls  the  cross  upon  the  standards  in  the  holy 
wars  or  crusades.  Heroic  slavery  returns,  and  lasts  a 
long  time  among  Christian  nations  because,  considering 
war  as  the  judgment  of  God,  the  victors  believed  the 
vanquished  to  be  abandoned  by  God  and  held  them  no 
better  than  beasts  (thus  the  Christians  called  the  Turks 
"  dogs  "  and  were  in  turn  called  "  pigs  "  by  them).  The 
ancients  deprived  the  conquered  of  all  things  human 
and  divine.  The  new  barbarians  on  occupying  a  city 
endeavoured  above  everything  to  search  out  and  carry 
off  the  tombs  or  relics  of  saints,  which  the  peoples  of  that 
time  buried  and  concealed  with  all  possible  care  ;  and 
thus  almost  all  translations  of  relics  took  place  at  this 
time.  A  trace  of  this  custom  survives  in  the  rule  by 
which  a  conquered  nation  must  buy  back  from  the  vic- 
torious generals  all  the  bells  in  the  cities  they  have  taken. 
Analogous  resemblances  may  be  found  in  the  juridical 
regulation  of  property.  The  primary  division  of  property 
in  feudal  law  is  that  into  feudal  goods  and  allodial  goods. 
Allodial  tenure  was  in  origin  a  highly  secure  right,  un- 
encumbered by  any  external  charge,  even  a  public  one ; 
and  applied  to  property  directly  acquired  or  conquered 
by  the  patricians  or  barons.  Feudal  tenure  required  the 
approval  of  the  lord  by  whom  it  had  been  granted. 
Allodial  tenure  thus  corresponded  to  quiritary  ex  Optimo 
iure,  and  feudal  to  bonitary  ;  and  it  was  only  when  later 
in  modern  Europe  as  previously  in  ancient  Rome  a  new 
census  and  treasury  were  formed,  and  when  allodial 
property  was  made  subject  to  public  charges,  that  it  could 
be  contemptuously  described  as  "  goods  of  the  spindle  " 
as  opposed  to  feudal,  "  goods  of  the  lance."  Thus,  to 


220      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

take  an  example,  the  provinces  which  were  later  incor- 
porated  into  the   French  kingdom  had   formerly  been 
sovereign    principalities    feudally    dependent    upon    the 
ruler  of  the  said  kingdom  ;   their  sovereign  princes  being 
free  from  all  public  charge  in  the  tenure  of  their  (allodial) 
possessions.     Later,  when  through  succession,  rebellion 
or  failure  of  heirs  these  provinces  became  part  of  the 
kingdom,  the  property  was  made  liable  to  taxation  and 
tribute ;    the  tenure  ex  optima  iure  was  confused  with 
private  non- feudal  tenure  subject  to  these  charges,  and 
allodials  in  the  noble  sense  of  the  word  were  identified 
with  allodials  in  the  common  sense.     The  later  students 
of  feudalism  missed  the  point  of  the  primitive  distinction 
just  as  the  late  Roman  jurists  forgot  the  meaning  of 
tenure  ex  optima  iure.    To  the  feudal  tenure  belonged 
emphyteosis  (so  that  the  allodial  right  ultimately  signified 
both  what  the  vassal  paid  to  the  sovereign  and  the  planter 
to  his  immediate  lord)  :     "  commendations,"   identical 
with  the  ancient  clientela  :    the  "  census  "  by  which  the 
vassals  were  bound  to  serve  their  lords  in  war  (the  tribu- 
taries, angarii  OTperangarii,  being  equivalent  to  the  Roman 
assidui) :  the  "  precaria,"  which  must  originally  have  been 
land  granted  by  lords  in  response  to  the  prayers  of  the 
poor  :    and  "  libelli  "  or  transferences  of  non-movable 
property  which  in  this  agricultural  economy  took  the 
place  of  commerce.     The  exclusion  of  women  from  inherit- 
ance, which  went  back  to  the  beginnings  of  Roman  law, 
was  renewed  in  the  form  of  the  "  salic  law  "  in  Germany 
and  among  all  the  early  barbarian  nations  of  Europe, 
though  it  preserved  its  force  only  in  France  and  Savoy. 
Punishments  were  cruel;  death  was  called  the  "ordinary 
penalty."     But  there  was  in  the  Middle  Ages  no  real 
penal  law  and  procedure  dealing  with  private  offences. 
The  murder  of  a  plebeian  was  committed  either  by  his 
own  lord,  whom  nobody  could  accuse,  or  by  another 
lord,  who  could  indemnify  the  man's  own  lord  for  his  loss 


THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  221 

as  if  he  had  been  a  slave.  This  custom  was  still  in  force 
in  Poland,  Lithuania,  Denmark,  Sweden  and  Norway. 
Under  the  name  of  "  canonical  purgations "  (though 
unrecognised  by  canon  law)  certain  kinds  of  divine  judg- 
ments or  duels  were  practised  throughout  Europe  ;  and 
private  vengeance  flourished  down  to  the  time  of  Bartolo. 
In  judgments  concerned  with  allodial  rights,  the  lords 
met  in  arms  ;  and  in  the  kingdom  of  Naples  even  in  Vico's 
own  days  barons  avenged  intrusions  upon  their  own 
feoffs  on  the  part  of  other  barons  not  by  civil  suits  but  by 
duels.  In  a  society  ruled  by  force,  what  wonder  that  the 
robbers  of  the  heroic  age  returned,  and  that  "  pirate  " 
became  a  title  of  nobility  ?  Never  has  the  fortune  of 
kingdoms  been  so  various  or  so  inconstant. 

The  Roman  law  of  Justinian,  penetrated  as  it  was  by 
the  idea  of  equity,  was  abandoned  and  fell  into  oblivion. 
In  France  and  Spain  any  one  who  dared  to  appeal  to  it  in  a 
cause  was  severely  punished  ;  in  Italy  it  is  certain  that 
the  nobles  considered  it  dishonourable  to  regulate  their 
affairs  by  Roman  law,  and  professed  to  live  according  to 
that  of  the  Lombards  ;  while  the  plebeians,  slower  in 
throwing  off  ancient  customs,  continued  to  practise 
certain  parts  of  the  Roman  law  by  force  of  habit.  In 
fact  the  law  of  the  period  consisted  rather  of  habits  than 
of  statutes  :  rigid  formulae  and  solemn  ceremonial  once 
more  acquired  importance,  and  a  distinction  was  made 
between  pacta  nuda,  naked  agreements,  and  pacta  vestita, 
agreements  clothed  and  reinforced  by  these  formulae 
and  ceremonies.  An  example  of  the  respect  in  which 
formulae  were  held  is  afforded  by  the  action  of  the  Emperor 
Conrad  III.  On  taking  Weinsberg,  a  town  which  had 
supported  his  rival  for  the  empire,  he  condemned  it  to 
extermination,  making  an  exception  only  in  favour  of 
the  women  and  all  they  could  bring  out  with  them.  The 
women  came  out  of  the  doomed  city  carrying  on  their 
backs  their  sons,  husbands  and  fathers  :  and  the  Emperor, 


aaa      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

standing  before  the  gate  at  the  head  of  his  army  with 
swords  drawn  and  lances  in  rest  to  satisfy  their  leader's 
terrible  wrath,  watched  them  and  allowed  them  to  pass 
safe  and  sound  out  of  respect  for  the  letter  of  his  own 
decree. 

It  was  an  illiterate  period,  a  fact  expressed  by  Vico  in 
the  statement  that  languages  again  became  "  mute  "  or 
hieroglyphic.  The  common  tongues,  Italian,  French, 
Spanish  and  German,  were  not  written  down  :  only  a  few 
ecclesiastics  wrote  a  barbarous  Latin,  and  hence  "  cleric  " 
and  "  scholar  "  became  synonymous  terms  ;  but  among 
the  very  priests  such  ignorance  prevailed  that  we  find 
documents  signed  by  bishops  with  the  sign  of  the  cross, 
as  they  were  unable  to  write  their  own  names.  Owing 
to  this  paucity  of  learning  an  English  law  laid  down  that 
a  man  condemned  to  death  should  be  reprieved  if  he 
could  write,  as  a  valuable  craftsman ;  and  "man  of  letters  " 
as  well  as  "  cleric  "  or  "  clerk  "  remained  a  name  for  a 
learned  man.  Hence  the  value  and  general  employment 
of  family  arms  to  indicate  the  owners  of  a  house,  a  tomb, 
land  or  livestock,  and  the  frequency  with  which  coats- 
of-arms  are  found  on  buildings  of  the  time. 

With  barbarism  returned  the  predominance  of  verse 
over  prose.  The  prose  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Latin  Church 
— and  the  same  is  true  of  those  of  the  Greek — is  full  of 
poetic  rhythms,  so  as  to  resemble  a  chant.  The  first 
modern  lyric  poetry  was  religious  ;  and  if  there  was  not 
strictly  a  Christian  religious  poetry,  this  was  because  the 
subjects  of  our  theology  transcend  all  intelligence  and 
imagination  and  crush  the  poetic  faculty.  Poetry  and 
history  were  once  more  confounded  ;  the  romantic  poets, 
the  heroic  poets  of  the  return  to  barbarism,  believed  their 
own  stories  to  be  true,  and  thus  Boiardo  and  Ariosto  took 
as  subject  for  their  poems  Turpin,  Bishop  of  Paris.  And 
just  as  the  French  language,  when  owing  to  the  famous 
Parisian  school  and  the  highly  subtle  scholastic  theology 


THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  323 

it  passed  at  a  stroke  from  spontaneity  to  reflection,  pre- 
served pure  diphthongs  in  great  number  while  adopting 
abstract  terms,  so  the  story  of  Turpin  survived  in  France 
like  a  Homeric  poem.  These  authors  of  Latin  poems 
confined  themselves  entirely  to  history,  for  instance, 
William  of  Apulia's  De  gestis  Normannorum  in  Italia  and 
Gunther's  Carmen  heroicum  de  rebus  a  Frederico  Bar- 
bar  ossa  gestis.  The  first  writers  in  the  vernacular  were  in 
Italy  poets  no  less  than  in  Provence  and  France.  A 
punctilious  virtue  like  that  of  Achilles  again  appeared, 
the  complete  morality  of  the  duellist ;  hence  arose  the 
proud  laws,  the  lofty  duties  and  the  vindictive  satisfac- 
tions of  the  knight-errants  sung  by  the  romantic  poets. 
Does  not  Cola  diRienzo  seem  to  be  a  real  Homeric  character 
in  his  swift  outburst  of  emotion  when,  as  we  read  in  his 
life,  while  speaking  of  the  unhappy  state  of  Rome  he 
excited  both  himself  and  his  listeners  to  unrestrained 
tears  ?  Hyperbole  was  a  common  type  of  thought,  as 
in  children  ;  f or  "  I  often  remember,"  writes  Vico,  "  when 
walking  abroad  that  the  gentle  slopes  which  unfold 
themselves  before  my  eyes  appeared  when  I  was  a  child 
to  be  steep  and  lofty  mountains."  Thus  in  the  Middle 
Ages  Roland  and  the  other  paladins  were  represented  as 
gigantic  in  stature  :  and  images  of  divine  beings,  the 
eternal  Father,  Christ,  or  the  Virgin,  painted  or  sculptured, 
were  of  colossal  dimensions. 

But  the  human  mind  is  like  land  which,  after  lying 
waste  for  long  centuries,  when  first  cultivated  bears  crops 
of  wonderful  quality,  size  and  abundance.  Thus  at  the 
close  of  barbarism  in  Italy  after  four  savage  and  stormy 
centuries,  arose  Dante,  the  Homer  of  the  second  barbarism, 
just  as  somewhat  later  flourished  the  delicate  verse  of 
Petrarch  and  the  gallant  and  graceful  prose  of  Boccaccio  ; 
all  three  incomparable  in  their  way.  And  since  barbarism 
is,  as  we  have  already  indicated,  truthful,  frank,  faithful, 
generous  and  magnanimous  by  nature,  Dante  puts  on 


224      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA    VICO 

the  stage  real  persons  and  real  actions  of  the  dead  ;  and 
his  poem  is  called  a  "  comedy  "  in  allusion  to  the  ancient 
comedy  which  followed  the  same  principle.  It  is  a  poem 
in  which  both  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  find  parallels  ; 
the  former  in  the  Inferno,  where  Dante  employs  his 
choleric  genius  and  all  his  vast  imagination  in  describing 
the  effects  of  implacable  wrath  and  recalling  numbers  of 
merciless  punishments,  a  worthy  companion-picture  to 
the  horrid  slaughters  of  Homer  (whose  descriptions  of 
them  inspire  pity  in  us,  but  gave  nothing  but  pleasure  to 
his  own  audience)  ;  the  latter,  the  Odyssey,  which  cele- 
brates the  heroic  endurance  of  Ulysses,  is  paralleled  by 
the  Purgatorio,  a  spectacle  of  severe  punishments  borne 
with  immovable  patience,  and  the  Paradiso  where  infinite 
joy  is  experienced  with  an  infinite  tranquillity  of  mind. 
Another  similarity  between  Dante  and  Homer  lies  in  the 
physiognomy  of  the  former's  language,  which  is  so  varied 
that  some  suppose  him  to  have  collected  it  like  Homer 
from  all  the  dialects  of  his  nation  ;  an  opinion  of  sixteenth- 
century  scholars  which  will  not  stand  criticism,  for  it  is 
certain  that  when  Dante  used  them  these  expressions 
must  have  been  current  at  Florence,  and  that  a  lifetime 
would  have  been  insufficient  to  collect  them  from  this 
side  and  from  that  when  there  were  no  writers  in  the 
various  dialects.  But  the  most  important  resemblance  of 
Dante  to  Homer  is  in  poetic  sublimity.  Dante  is  a  divine 
poet  who  to  the  delicate  imaginations  of  to-day  seems 
rough  and  uncivilised,  and  often  shocks  by  unwonted 
harmonies  an  ear  that  has  become  morbidly  sensitive 
through  effeminate  music.  But  he  is  received  very 
differently  by  men  of  severe  tastes  who  refuse  to  be 
satisfied  with  flowers,  ornaments  and  graces.  Like  Homer 
too  he  is  great  not  in  esoteric  wisdom  but  in  the  vigour  of 
his  imagination.  Dante  was  undoubtedly  a  very  learned 
theologian,  but  that  was  his  weakness  rather  than  his 
strength.  If  he  had  known  neither  Scholasticism  nor 


THE  RETURN  OF  BARBARISM  223 

Latin,  he  would  have  been  a  still  greater  poet,  and  perhaps 
the  Tuscan  language  would  have  had  what  Latin  never 
had,  a  poet  who  could  hi  everything  bear  comparison 
with  Homer. 

The  man  who  wrote  this  page  of  criticism  on  Dante 
and  vindicated  him  once  more  after  centuries  of  anti- 
Dantesque  taste  (or  mere  Dantesque  grammar  or  Dantesque 
scholasticism)  and  vindicated  him  in  the  very  height  of 
the  prosperity  of  the  Arcadianism  so  hostile  to  him, 
deserved  to  have  made  the  acquaintance  of  William 
Shakespear's  genius,  which  he  was  perhaps  the  only  man 
alive  capable  of  understanding.  But  in  Italy,  as  in  most 
countries  outside  England,  nothing  was  known  of  Shake- 
spear  at  this  time,  and  Vico  has  only  the  vague  and  belated 
remark  about  him  that  the  English,  untouched  by  the 
prevailing  delicacy  of  the  century,  took  no  pleasure  in 
tragedies  which  had  not  an  element  of  atrocity  in  them, 
just  as  the  earliest  taste  of  Greek  drama  was  for  the 
abominable  feast  of  Thyestes  and  Medea's  impious 
slaughter  of  her  brother  and  children.  The  tendency 
towards  Teutonic  poetry  and  literature  remained  in  Vico 
as  we  know  an  aspiration  only ;  he  was  unable  to  get  a 
clear  view  of  it  however  closely  he  tried  to  examine  it ; 
and  when  he  does  mention  it  upon  the  strength  of  second- 
hand information,  it  is  only  to  say  that  in  the  German 
nation,  especially  in  the  purely  agricultural  province  of 
Silesia,  "  poets  arose  naturally  "  ;  in  his  search  for  an 
unsophisticated  popular  poetry  he  had  in  fact  stumbled 
without  realising  his  mistake  upon  the  Silesian  school  of 
Hoffmanswaldau  and  Lohenstein,  the  German  imitators 
of  the  Neapolitan  Marino.  But  the  only  value  of  the 
anecdote  is  to  illustrate  anew  the  tricks  played  upon  Vico 
by  his  lively  fancy. 

How  the  world  emerged  from  the  second  barbarism 
and  the  feudal  constitution,  Vico  does  not  say.  He  does 
not  seem  to  have  fixed  his  attention  upon  the  communal 

Q 


226      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

movement  which  presents  so  many  analogies  with  the 
struggles  of  the  Roman  plebs  and  the  formation  of 
ancient  democracy.  He  makes  game,  here  again,  of  those 
who  traced  the  genesis  of  modern  monarchies  such  as  the 
French  to  a  simple  law  like  that  of  Tribonian  by  which, 
he  explains  ironically,  the  paladins  of  France  deprived 
themselves  of  their  power  and  conferred  it  upon  the  kings 
of  the  Capetian  dynasty.  He  also  observes  that  the 
baronial  power,  being  dispersed  and  dissipated  by  reason 
of  civil  wars  in  which  they  were  obliged  to  depend  upon 
the  people,  was  the  more  easily  gathered  up  by  sovereign 
monarchs  ;  and  that  thus  the  "  obsequium  "  of  vassals  to 
their  baron  passed  into  the  "  obsequium  principis."  But 
he  gives  quite  a  special  importance  to  the  rediscovery  of 
Roman  law  (that  "  natural  law  of  the  European  nations  " 
as  Grotius  had  called  it)  by  the  studies  undertaken  in  the 
Italian  universities.  Men  thus  learnt  anew  the  principles 
of  natural  equity ;  the  nobles  and  plebeians  became 
equal  in  the  eyes  of  civil  law  as  they  are  already  in  human 
nature,  the  secrets  of  the  laws  passed  out  of  the  hands  of 
the  feudatories,  whose  power  consequently  diminished  by 
degrees,  and  the  humane  government  of  free  republics 
and  perfect  monarchies  came  into  being.  The  reflux  of 
heroic  society  had  now  undergone  a  contrary  reflux  ; 
it  was  no  longer  possible,  under  the  conditions  of  modern 
civilisation,  to  recall  it  to  life,  just  as  it  was  impossible 
for  the  attempts  of  the  Pythagoreans  and  Dion  of  Syracuse 
to  restore  the  ancient  aristocracies.  The  plebeians,  once 
recognised  as  naturally  equals  of  the  nobles,  no  longer 
submitted  to  remaining  inferior  to  them  in  civil  life. 
And  the  few  aristocratic  republics  which  here  and  there 
survived  in  Europe  were  compelled  to  take  infinite  pains 
and  all  manner  of  wise  measures  in  order  to  keep  quiet 
and  contented  the  multitudes  whom  they  governed. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

VICO   AND  THE  TENDENCIES   OF  CONTEMPORARY 
CULTURE 

HAVING  reached,  in  his  review  of  the  course  of  history, 
his  own  time,  a  time  of  civilisation  spread  over  all  nations, 
Vico  gives  a  rapid  description  of  the  contemporary  world 
and  then  says  no  more  :  perhaps  unsatisfied,  at  any  rate 
uncertain  or  cautious.  As  he  was  not  led  to  embark  upon 
the  New  Science  by  the  direct  call  of  political  problems, 
at  least  in  the  ordinary  meaning  of  the  phrase,  he  never 
descends  from  the  contemplations  of  the  New  Science  to 
the  practical  life,  even  in  the  form  which  it  most  usually 
takes  with  a  philosopher,  a  work  or  short  treatise  criticising 
laws  and  institutions  or  suggesting  improvements.  Even 
when  he  does  dimly  conceive  the  idea  of  a  "  practical 
aspect  "  of  his  science,  he  never  supposes  that  so  far  as 
he  is  concerned  it  could  ever  exist  except  "  within  the 
academies." 

Practical  philosophy  "  within  the  academies,"  that  is 
to  say,  within  the  sphere  of  culture,  is  however  still 
practical  and  political ;  and  it  is  assuredly  not  the  least 
important  branch  of  politics.  And  a  historian  or  philo- 
sopher can  never  entirely  avoid  it,  though  he  can  emphasise 
it  more  or  less  and  develop  it  more  or  less  fully. 

Vico  does  emphasise  and  develop  it  freely.  The  first 
expression  of  his  scientific  life  was  precisely  an  examina- 
tion of  modern  methods  of  study  and  education  as  com- 

227 


228      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

pared  with  those  of  the  ancients  :  an  examination  which 
after  various  attempts  and  uncertainties  in  his  first 
discoveries,  took  form  in  his  University  inaugural  lecture 
of  1708,  De  nostri  temporis  studiorum  -ratione.  In  the 
following  years,  engaged  as  he  was  upon  the  New  Science, 
he  gave  no  further  public  demonstration  of  his  discontent 
with  the  prevailing  tendency  of  studies  ;  but  he  expressed 
his  feelings  on  the  subject  all  the  more  often  and  all  the 
more  strongly  in  private  letters,  and  did  not  wish  to 
pass  over  the  question  in  his  autobiography.  We  need 
not  then  infer  his  polemical  attitude  from  hints  and 
chance  phrases  of  his  chief  work ;  since  he  has  himself  more 
than  once  converted  these  hints  into  explicit  statements 
and  these  chance  phrases  into  leading  propositions. 

This  polemic  occupies  two  closely-related  spheres 
corresponding  to  the  double  aspect  of  the  New  Science  as 
a  Philosophy  of  Mind  and  a  Generalising  Science.  Under 
the  first  aspect  Vico  had  vindicated  the  claims  of  imagina- 
tion, the  imaginative  universal,  probability,  certitude, 
experience  and  authority,  and  therefore  also  of  poetry, 
religion,  history,  observation  of  nature,  scholarship  and 
tradition.  Under  the  second,  he  had  traced  a  scheme 
of  the  natural  development  of  the  mind  both  in  the  history 
of  mankind  and  in  that  of  the  individual,  which  he  brings 
into  constant  relation  with  the  phases  of  history.  Hence 
his  examination  was  bound  to  extend  on  the  one  hand 
to  the  mental  condition  of  his  own  tune  and  on  the  other 
to  the  way  in  which  the  education  of  children  and  young 
people  was  conceived  and  undertaken.  In  both  spheres 
Vico  saw  the  same  defects  ;  he  was  met  by  the  same  arid 
intellectualism  which  had  made  impossible  the  process 
of  thought  and  had  mutilated  and  falsified  the  truth  of 
human  history. 

On  emerging  from  grammar-schools,  boys  were  immedi- 
ately plunged  into  logic.  The  logic  studied  might  be, 
according  to  the  teacher's  taste,  either  the  scholastic  or 


CONTEMPORARY  CULTURE  229 

more  often  that  composed  by  Arnauld  and  called  the 
Port-Royal  Logic,  itself  in  substance  Aristotelian  and 
Scholastic,  but  full  of  dry  judgments  concerning  abstruse 
subjects  in  advanced  sciences  and  far  removed  from 
common  knowledge ;  overloaded  in  fact  with  examples 
drawn  from  such  sciences.  Such  a  discipline  was  meant  to 
make  boys  critical  and  to  eradicate  from  their  minds  not 
only  false,  but  even  probable  and  plausible  opinions.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  it  eradicated  nothing,  since  their  minds 
were  still  empty  or  scantily  furnished,  and  unable  to 
make  any  use  of  criticism  for  lack  of  matter  to  criticise. 
They  were  to  be  taught  to  judge  before  being  taught  to 
apprehend,  an  order  false  to  the  natural  course  of  ideas, 
which  are  first  apprehended,  then  judged,  and  finally 
reasoned.  The  result  was  that  minds  educated  in  this 
way  became  arid  and  unfruitful  in  development,  and 
believed  themselves  capable  of  judging  everything,  while 
able  to  create  nothing.  They  remained  all  their  lives 
intensely  acute  in  formal  thinking,  but  incapable  of  any 
great  labour ;  critical,  in  fact,  but  sterile.  This  caused 
not  only  unsoundness  and  arrogance  of  judgment  but 
incapacity  in  practical  life,  dealings  with  men,  and  civil 
eloquence,  which  is  founded  less  upon  criticism  than  upon 
plausibility,  and  attains  its  end  by  making  opportune 
remarks,  understanding  the  psychology  of  one's  inter- 
locutor and  acting  in  a  manner  adapted  to  it.  Vico  him- 
self had  suffered  from  the  logico-critical  method  of  educa- 
tion. One  of  his  first  teachers,  the  Jesuit  Del  Balzo,  had 
put  into  his  hands  the  works  of  the  epitomist  Paulus 
Venetus  :  and  his  mind,  being  too  weak  as  yet  to  cope 
with  this  kind  of  Chrysippean  logic,  almost  broke  down 
under  the  strain  ;  so  that  having  given  up  his  studies  in 
despair  it  was  eighteen  months  before  he  resumed  them.  He 
preserved  a  happier  memory  of  his  youthful  essays  in  poetry 
in  the  wildest  style  of  the  Neapolitan  school  of  Marino : 
a  form  of  diversion,  he  says,  almost  necessary  to  the  mind 


930      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

of  the  young  when  metaphysic  has  rendered  it  too  subtle 
and  too  rigid  in  precisely  those  years  when  the  ardour  of 
youth  ought  to  lead  the  mind  into  errors,  so  as  to  save  it 
from  becoming  chilly  and  dry.  This  age,  the  "  barbarism 
of  intellect,"  vigorous  in  imagination  and  also,  through  the 
close  connexion  that  exists  between  the  two,  in  memory, 
requires  to  be  nourished  and  exercised  by  the  reading  of 
poetry,  history  and  rhetoric  as  well  as  by  the  study  of 
languages.  The  art  which  it  ought  to  learn  is  not  criticism 
but  "  topic,"  the  true  art  of  the  "  ingenium  "  or  faculty  of 
invention.  By  means  of  this  art  children  acquire  materials 
which  enable  them  to  form  sound  judgments  in  later  life  ; 
for  sound  judgment  depends  upon  a  complete  knowledge 
of  its  subject-matter,  and  "  topic  "  is  the  art  of  discovering 
the  whole  content  of  any  given  thing.  In  this  way  young 
people  simply  by  following  the  course  of  nature  become  at 
once  philosophers  and  good  speakers. 

Some  antidote  is  doubtless  necessary  to  the  exuberance 
of  the  imagination.  But  this  must  be  sought  in  linear 
geometry  rather  than  in  logic  :  for  geometry  is  to  some 
extent  pictorial  in  character,  while  it  strengthens  the 
memory  by  the  great  number  of  its  elements,  ennobles 
the  imagination  by  the  delicacy  of  its  figures  and  stimulates 
the  inventive  faculty  by  forcing  it  to  review  all  these 
figures  in  order  to  choose  those  suitable  to  the  demonstra- 
tion of  the  quantity  required.  But  the  whole  value  of 
geometry  also  was  annulled  by  the  method  then  in  favour 
with  the  schools,  the  algebraic  method,  which  like  the 
scholastic  logic  numbs  all  the  vigour  of  youthful  faculties, 
obscures  the  imagination,  enfeebles  the  memory,  and 
renders  the  inventive  power  and  the  understanding  slug- 
gish ;  thus  damaging  the  liberal  arts  in  four  distinct  ways, 
in  the  knowledge  of  languages  and  history,  in  invention 
and  in  prudence.  More  particularly  algebra  is  fatal  to  the 
inventive  faculty,  because  in  using  the  algebraic  method 
one  is  conscious  only  of  the  immediate  field  of  vision  ; 


CONTEMPORARY  CULTURE  231 

it  weakens  the  memory  because  once  the  second  sign  is 
found  the  first  need  no  longer  be  remembered ;  it  blinds 
the  imagination,  because  that  faculty  is  not  used  at  all ; 
it  destroys  the  understanding,  because  it  lays  claim  to 
the  power  of  divination.  Young  men  who  have  devoted 
their  time  to  it  on  proceeding  to  deal  with  the  affairs  of 
civil  life  find  themselves,  to  their  great  grief  and  remorse, 
unfitted  for  such  a  life.  Hence,  to  make  it  useful  in  some 
degree  and  to  prevent  these  ill  effects,  it  should  be  studied 
for  a  short  tune  only  at  the  close  of  the  mathematical 
course,  and  employed  only  as  a  means  of  abbreviation. 
The  habit  of  reasoning  is  formed  much  better  by  meta- 
physical analysis,  which  in  all  questions  begins  by  taking 
truth  in  the  infinity  of  being,  and  then  descends  by  degrees 
through  the  genera  of  the  substance,  eliminating  in  every 
species  that  which  the  thing  is  not,  till  it  arrives  at  the 
ultimate  differentia  constituting  the  essence  of  the  thing 
we  wish  to  know. 

Education  as  a  whole  was  suffering  from  an  excess  of 
mathematics  and  a  lack  of  concreteness.  As  if  boys,  on 
emerging  from  academic  life,  were  to  enter  a  human 
world  composed  of  lines,  numbers  and  algebraic  symbols, 
their  heads  were  crammed  with  the  magnificent  phrases 
"demonstration,"  "demonstrative  truth,"  and  "evidence," 
and  the  rule  of  probability  was  condemned  ;  though  this 
rule  is  the  only  guide  of  statesmen  in  their  counsels, 
generals  in  their  campaigns,  orators  in  their  treatment 
of  a  cause,  judges  in  giving  a  decision,  physicians  hi 
treating  bodily  diseases,  and  moralistic  theologians  in 
treating  those  of  the  conscience  ;  the  rule  which  the 
world  accepts,  and  upon  which  it  rests  in  all  disputes  and 
controversies,  in  all  measures,  and  in  all  elections ;  which 
are  universally  determined  by  unanimity  or  the  majority 
of  votes.  Such  an  education  bred  up  an  empty  and  in- 
flated generation,  pedantry  without  wisdom  and  argument 
without  truth. 


232      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

The  educators  themselves,  that  is  to  say,  the  general 
atmosphere  of  culture,  resembled  this  scheme  of  educa- 
tion. Poetry  was  dead.  The  analytic  methods  had 
"  numbed  "  (to  repeat  once  more  a  word  which  Vico  uses 
with  great  frequency  and  force)  "  all  the  generosity  of 
the  better  poetry."  And  indeed  Europe  was  never  so 
entirely  barren  of  all  poetic  growth  as  it  was  in  the  first 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Italy  was  reduced  to  the 
drama  of  Metastasio ;  France  had  produced  no  one  to 
succeed  Corneille  and  Moliere  ;  in  Spain  the  national 
drama,  that  great  outburst  of  the  national  spirit,  was 
dead,  and  a  rationalism  imitating  that  of  France  was 
taking  its  place  ;  England  seemed  to  have  entirely  for- 
gotten that  she  once  gave  birth  to  Shakespear,  and  even 
Germany  was  wasting  her  time  over  neo-classical  imita- 
tions. Not  only  did  nobody  create  new  poetry,  but 
nobody  wanted  it.  The  philosophers,  following  Descartes 
and  Malebranche,  had  declared  a  war  of  extermination 
against  all  the  faculties  of  the  mind  which  depend  upon 
sense,  and  especially  against  the  imagination,  which  they 
hated  as  the  source  of  every  error.  They  condemned  the 
poets  on  the  false  pretext  that  they  told  "  fables,"  as  if 
the  fables  they  told  were  not  those  eternal  properties  of 
the  human  mind  which  to  the  political  philosophers, 
economists  and  moralists  are  the  subject-matter  of  reason- 
ing, and  to  the  poets  that  of  representation. 

The  Cartesians  also  used  their  authority  to  belittle  the 
study  of  languages.  Did  not  Descartes  say  that  the 
knowledge  of  Latin  was  no  greater  knowledge  than  was 
possessed  by  Cicero's  servant-girl  ?  Serious  scholarship 
in  Latin  and  Greek  had  come  to  an  end  with  the  writers 
of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  ;  the  study 
of  oriental  languages  was  confined  to  the  Protestants  ; 
and  Holland  was  the  only  country  in  which  law  was  still 
a  subject  of  research.  The  famous  library  of  Valletta  at 
Naples,  rich  in  the  finest  editions  of  Greek  and  Latin 


CONTEMPORARY  CULTURE  233 

works,  was  generously  bought  by  the  fathers  of  the  Oratory, 
but  for  less  than  half  its  original  value  owing  to  the  depreci- 
ation of  books.  In  France  the  library  of  Cardinal  Dubois 
found  no  purchaser  and  was  sold  in  small  lots.  Princes 
no  longer  loved  good  Latin,  and  none  of  them  thought  of 
preserving  to  posterity  by  the  pen  of  pure  Latin  scholar- 
ship even  an  event  so  weighty  as  the  War  of  the  Spanish 
Succession,  comparable  only  to  the  second  Punic  war. 

New  methods  were  in  great  favour  :  but  none  of  these 
could  point  to  new  facts  discovered  by  their  help.  New 
formulae,  old  facts  ;  and  instead  of  facts,  a  futile  hope  of 
attaining  universal  knowledge  in  the  shortest  time  and 
with  the  smallest  effort.  Civil  and  political  learning  was 
neglected  for  physical  science,  and  physical  science  for 
mathematical ;  experience  was  almost  ignored ;  the  in- 
ventive thought  of  the  previous  century  all  but  entirely 
exhausted.  Scepticism,  the  result  of  the  Cartesian  method, 
invaded  the  field  of  knowledge. 

The  whole  of  Europe  was  during  this  period  still  under 
the  dominion  of  the  French  language,  a  language  which 
differs  from  the  Italian  in  its  hostility  to  poetry  and 
eloquence  ;  rich,  says  Vico,  in  terms  of  substance,  and 
consequently,  since  substance  is  a  brutal  and  immobile 
thing  and  does  not  admit  of  comparisons,  incapable  of 
giving  colour,  amplitude  or  weight  to  its  statements  ;  it 
resists  inversion  and  is  barren  of  metaphor.  The  French 
have  no  periods  but  only  members  of  periods  :  their 
prosody  has  no  verse  better  than  the  so-called  Alexandrine, 
a  system  of  couplets  more  thin  and  lifeless  than  the 
elegiac  :  and  their  words  admit  of  no  accent  except  those  on 
the  last  two  syllables.  French  is  a  language  incapable  of  the 
sublime,  but  well  adapted  to  the  petty :  owing  to  its  abund- 
ance of  terms  of  substance  or  abstract  terms  it  is  adapted 
also  to  the  didactic  style,  and  instead  of  eloquence  it  offers 
esprit.  It  was  not  unfitting  that  criticism  and  analysis 
originated  in  France  and  made  use  of  the  French  tongue. 


234      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

The  only  possession  of  value  which  grew  up  day  by  day 
in  all  this  poverty  was  the  abstracts,  the  encyclopaedias, 
the  dictionaries  of  science  which  bore  the  names  of  such 
men  as  Bayle,  Hoffmann  and  Moreri :  the  idlest  and 
most  casual  method  of  learning  that  could  possibly  be 
devised.  The  genius  of  the  age  was  more  drawn  towards 
expounding  second-hand  knowledge  in  an  abbreviated 
form  than  towards  attempting  to  enlarge  its  bounds. 
That  seemed  impossible  :  so  men  went  on  compiling 
dictionaries  of  mathematics.  Every  one  felt  a  thirst  for 
cheap  science.  To  be  thought  good,  a  book  must  be  clear 
and  simple,  capable  of  being  discussed  with  ladies  as  a 
pastime ;  if  it  demanded  wide  and  copious  erudition  of 
the  reader,  and  forced  upon  him  the  unpleasant  exercise 
of  thought  and  synthesis,  it  was  condemned  as  unin- 
telligible. 

These  dictionaries  and  abstracts  recalled  to  Vice's 
mind  the  similar  products  of  the  Greek  decadence,  the 
anthologies,  lexicons  and  encyclopaedias  of  Suidas,  Stobaeus 
and  Photius.  The  whole  culture  of  his  time  seemed  to 
him  to  be  repeating  the  downfall  of  Greek  science,  ex- 
hausting itself  in  a  metaphysic  either  useless  or  harmful 
to  civilisation  and  a  mathematics  engaged  in  investigating 
quantities  intangible  by  rule  and  compass,  and  incapable 
of  application.  Like  others  among  the  best  minds  of  his 
country  he  was  persuaded  that  the  republic  of  letters 
was  approaching  dissolution,  if  the  divine  providence 
failed  by  one  of  its  innumerable  secret  paths  to  infuse 
new  vigour  into  it.  Where  was  now  the  wise  man,  the 
real  "  sapiens  "  whom  Vico  had  found  in  history,  first  in 
the  barbaric  figure  of  the  theologian-poet,  then  in  the 
civilised  and  rational  figure  of  Greek  philosopher  and 
Roman  jurist,  the  man  whom  for  to-day  he  hoped  to  find 
in  the  master  of  eloquence  like  himself,  called  to  give 
unity,  life  and  power  to  all  knowledge  ?  Wisdom  is 
indeed  not  this  or  that  science,  nor  yet  the  sum  total  of 


CONTEMPORAR  Y  CUL TURE  235 

science  ;  it  is  the  faculty  which  rules  over  all  studies  and 
by  which  all  the  sciences  and  arts  that  go  to  make  humanity 
are  acquired.  And  since  man  is  both  thought  and  spirit, 
intellect  and  will,  it  must  satisfy  both  these  sides  of  man, 
the  second  as  a  result  of  the  first :  it  must  teach  the 
knowledge  of  divine  things,  to  bring  to  perfection  things 
human.  The  wise  man  is  man  in  his  totality  and  entirety, 
the  whole  man. 

The  ideal  is  no  doubt  lofty,  and  the  criticism  upon  the 
educational  method  and  tendencies  of  thought  current  in 
his  age  are,  no  doubt,  perfectly  just.  And  yet  among  all 
these  admirable  truths,  far  in  advance  of  the  eighteenth 
century  as  they  are,  we  feel  in  Vico  the  educationalist  and 
critic  something  of  the  reactionary.  We  feel  that,  in  his 
exclusive  care  for  the  fate  of  the  highest  and  most  austere 
science  and  his  exclusive  attention  to  the  most  complete 
form  of  human  life,  he  failed  to  grasp  the  revolutionary 
importance  of  this  scepticism  or  rationalism,  this  rebellion 
against  the  past,  the  necessary  weapon  of  a  warfare 
against  kings,  nobles  and  priests  ;  of  these  abstracts  and 
dictionaries  which  were  to  develop  into  the  Encyclopaedia; 
of  this  popular  science,  the  forerunner  of  journalism, 
and  these  booklets  for  the  use  of  ladies  in  fashionable  con- 
versation which  were  the  nourishment  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  salons  and  prepared  men's  minds  for  the 
radicalism  of  the  Jacobins.  We  feel  in  him  here  as  in  his 
philosophical  system,  the  Catholic  chained  to  the  philo- 
sopher, the  Christian  pessimist  weighing  down  the  dialectic 
of  immanence.  Unable  to  realise  his  adversaries'  progress, 
he  does  not  comprehend  their  real  nature  as  lower  than 
himself,  but  yet  constituting  steps  leading  up  to  himself, 
steps  which  he  ought  to  have  traversed  in  order  to  attain 
a  truer  understanding  and  grasp  of  himself.  His  polemical 
attitude  towards  the  culture  of  his  time  completes  and 
confirms  the  analysis  already  given  of  the  merits  and 
defects  of  his  philosophy. 


CHAPTER  XX 

CONCLUSION  :    VICO  AND  THE  LATER  DEVELOPMENTS  OF 
PHILOSOPHICAL   AND  HISTORICAL  THOUGHT 

THE  reader  need  not  expect  that  having  brought  our 
exposition  to  a  close  we  shall  add  a  verdict  upon  Vice's 
work,  or  what  is  known  as  an  "  appreciation  "  of  it.  If 
the  verdict  has  not  already  emerged  as  a  result  of  the 
exposition  itself,  or  as  identical  with  it,  if  description  and 
criticism  have  been  not  one  and  same,  the  fault  lies  either 
with  ourselves  or  with  the  reader's  lack  of  attention  ; 
and  in  either  case  it  cannot  now  be  repaired  by  ornamental 
additions  or  redundant  repetitions. 

We  confess  also  that  we  feel  no  sympathy  with  the 
chapters  commonly  placed  at  the  conclusion  of  critical 
works  upon  philosophers  and  narrating  the  later  history 
of  their  ideas.  For  if  these  "  ideas  "  are  understood  in 
an  extrinsic  sense,  in  their  influence  upon  society  and 
culture,  such  a  review  may  indeed  have  a  value  of  its 
own,1  but  is  foreign  to  the  history  of  philosophy  properly 
so  called :  if  on  the  other  hand  they  are  considered  as 
real  and  living  philosophical  ideas,  their  later  history 
amounts  to  neither  more  nor  less  than  the  history  of 
subsequent  philosophy,  and  there  is  no  reason  for  append- 
ing it  to  a  study  of  one  philosopher  rather  than  another. 
Any  other  method  implies  the  uncritical  theory  that  ideas 
are  something  solid  and  crystallised,  like  precious  stones 

1  See  Appendix  II. 
236 


CONCLUSION  237 

handed  on  from  one  generation  to  another,  whose  shape 
and  glitter  can  always  be  recognised  unaltered  in  the  new 
diadems  they  compose  and  the  new  brows  they  adorn. 
But  in  reality  ideas  are  nothing  but  the  unremitting 
thought  of  man,  and  transmission  for  them  is  nothing 
less  than  transformation. 

It  is  nevertheless  a  fact  that  no  one  has  written  on 
Vico  without  feeling  a  need  of  casting  his  eyes  over  later 
years  and  noting  the  resemblances  and  analogies  between 
the  Neapolitan  philosopher's  doctrines  and  those  of  fifty 
or  a  hundred  years  after.  And  further,  we  ourselves,  in 
spite  of  the  antipathy  we  admittedly  feel,  and  the  methodi- 
cal criteria  we  professedly  employ,  yet  recognise  now  the 
same  necessity.  Why  is  this  ?  Because  Vico  in  his 
own  day  passed  for  an  eccentric  and  lived  as  a  recluse  ; 
because  the  later  development  of  thought  was  almost 
entirely  untouched  by  his  direct  influence  ;  because  even 
to-day,  though  well  enough  known  in  certain  restricted 
circles,  he  has  not  taken  the  place  he  deserves  in  the 
general  history  of  thought.  How  then  can  we  show  the 
manner  in  which  his  doctrines,  true  or  false,  respond  to 
the  deepest  needs  of  the  mind,  more  simply  than  by  re- 
cording the  similarity  of  the  ideas  and  attempts  which 
later  appeared  in  such  profusion  and  intensity  as  to  stamp 
their  individuality  upon  the  philosophical  and  historical 
labours  of  a  whole  century  ?  And  even  if  after  our 
intrinsic  examination  of  his  thought  this  comparison 
with  the  facts  of  later  history  seems  unnecessary,  it  will 
at  least  be  granted  that  if  our  discourse  like  any  other 
must  have  its  rhetorical  conclusion,  no  peroration  occurs 
more  naturally  than  one  consisting  in  a  rapid  review  of 
subsequent  philosophy  and  philology  and  emphasising 
their  points  of  contact  with  the  thought  of  Vico. 

We  might  even  adopt  the  method  by  which  he  compares 
the  second  barbarism  with  the  first,  and  present  the  later 
history  of  thought  as  a  "  reflux  "  of  Vico's  ideas.  In  the 


938      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

first  place  his  criticism  of  Descartes'  immediate  knowledge 
recurs,  together  with  his  conversion  of  the  true  with  the 
created,  in  the  speculative  movement  beginning  with 
Kant  and  Hegel  and  culminating  in  the  doctrine  of  the 
identity  of  truth  and  reality,  thought  and  existence. 
His  unity  of  philosophy  and  philology  recurs  in  the  vindica- 
tion of  history  against  the  scepticism  and  intellectualism 
of  the  eighteenth  century  due  to  Cartesianism ;  in  the 
a  priori  synthesis  of  Kant  which  reconciles  the  real  and 
the  ideal,  experience  and  the  categories  ;  and  in  the 
historical  philosophy  of  Hegel,  the  greatest  exponent  of 
nineteenth-century  historical  tendencies.  This  unity  of 
philosophy  and  philology,  a  unity  with  Vico  sometimes 
confused  and  impure  in  method,  recurred  in  its  faulty 
aspects  also  in  the  Hegelian  school ;  so  that  this  mental 
tendency  might  with  justice  be  entitled  "  Vicianism."  The 
limitation  which  Vico  tried  to  impose  on  the  value  of  mathe- 
matics and  exact  science  recurred,  as  did  his  criticism  of  the 
mathematical  and  naturalistic  conception  of  philosophy, 
in  Jacobi's  critique  of  Spinozistic  determinism  and  Hegel's 
of  the  abstract  intellect ;  and  in  the  case  of  mathematics 
in  particular  Dugald  Stewart  and  others  recognised  that 
its  validity  lay  not  in  the  postulates  but  in  the  definitions, 
and  the  "  fictions  "  of  which  Vico  speaks  reappear  in  the 
modern  terminology  of  the  philosophy  of  these  sciences. 
His  poetical  logic  or  science  of  the  imagination  passes 
into  Aesthetic,  so  ardently  studied  by  the  philosophers, 
literary  men  and  artists  of  Germany  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  brought  by  Kant  into  great  prominence  by  his 
criticism  of  the  Leibnitian  doctrine  of  intuition  as  con- 
fused conception,  and  further  advanced  by  Schelling  and 
Hegel,  who  place  art  among  the  pure  forms  of  the  mind 
and  so  approach  the  position  of  Vico.  Romanticism  too, 
especially  in  Germany  but  also  more  or  less  in  other 
countries,  was  Vician,  emphasising  as  it  did  the  original 
function  of  the  imagination.  His  doctrines  of  language 


CONCLUSION  239 

recurred  when  Herder  and  Humboldt  treated  it  not  in- 
tellectualistically  as  an  artificial  system  of  symbols,  but 
as  a  free  and  poetic  creation  of  the  mind.  The  theory  of 
religion  and  mythology  abandoned  the  hypotheses  of 
allegory  and  deception,  and  with  David  Hume  recog- 
nised that  religion  is  a  natural  fact,  corresponding  to 
the  beginnings  of  human  life  in  its  passionate  and 
imaginative  state ;  with  Heyne,  that  mythology  is 
"  symbolic  speech,"  a  product  not  of  arbitrary  invention 
but  of  necessity  and  poverty,  of  the  "  lack  of  words," 
which  finds  expression  "  in  comparisons  with  things 
already  known  "  (per  rerum  iam  turn  notarum  similitudines] ; 
and  with  Ottfried  Muller,  that  it  is  impossible  to  understand 
mythology  without  entering  into  the  very  heart  of  the 
human  soul,  where  we  maysee  its  necessity  and  spontaneity. 
Religion  was  regarded  no  longer  as  something  extraneous 
or  hostile  to  philosophy,  as  a  piece  of  stupidity  or  of 
deception  practised  by  the  unscrupulous  upon  the  simple, 
but  according  to  Vice's  own  doctrine  as  a  rudimentary 
philosophy  ;  so  that  the  whole  content  of  reasoned  meta- 
physic  was  already  to  a  certain  extent  implicit  in  poetical 
or  religious  metaphysic.  Similarly,  poetry  and  history 
were  no  longer  kept  distinct  or  set  face  to  face  to  destroy 
each  other  ;  and  as  one  of  the  great  inspirers  of  the  new 
German  literature,  Hamann  (who  in  many  ways  resembles 
Vico  in  tendency,  though  unequal  to  him  in  mental  power), 
had  already  foreseen  when  he  uttered  the  warning,  "  if 
our  poetry  is  worthless,  our  history  will  become  leaner 
than  Pharaoh's  kine,"  a  breath  of  poetry  revived  the 
historical  study  of  the  nineteenth  century  ;  once  colour- 
less, it  became  picturesque :  once  frigid,  it  regained 
warmth  and  life.  The  criticism  of  Hobbes'  and  Locke's 
utilitarianism,  and  the  affirmation  of  the  moral  conscious- 
ness as  a  spontaneous  sense  of  shame  and  a  judgment 
entirely  free  from  reflection  reappeared  in  full  panoply 
with  the  Critique  of  the  Practical  Reason  ;  and  that  of 


240      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

their  social  atomism  and  consequent  contractualism  in 
Hegel's  Philosophy  of  Right.  The  liberty  of  conscience 
and  religious  indifferentism  professed  and  inculcated  by 
the  publicists  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  negated 
as  a  philosophical  doctrine  ;  and  a  nation  without  God 
seemed  to  Hegel,  as  it  did  to  Vico,  a  phenomenon  not  to 
be  found  in  history  and  existing  only  in  the  gossip  of 
travellers  in  unknown  or  little-known  lands.  Carrying 
on  the  work  of  the  Reformation,  which  Vico  could  neither 
grasp  nor  truly  appreciate,  the  idealistic  philosophy  of 
Germany  aimed  not  at  exterminating  religion,  but  at 
refining  it,  and  at  giving  philosophy  itself  the  spiritual 
value  of  religion.  The  certitude,  the  hard  certitude 
which  Vico  distinguished  from  truth  in  the  sphere  of 
law,  formed  the  subject  of  thought  from  Thomasius  to 
Kant  and  Fichte  and  so  on  to  the  most  recent  writers, 
who  have  sought  even  if  they  have  never  found  the  dis- 
tinctive criterion  of  the  two  forms  ;  all  or  nearly  all  show 
a  vivid  consciousness  of  what  is  called  "  constraint"  or 
"  compulsion,"  a  fact  which  had  been  almost  forgotten 
in  the  old  superficial  and  rhetorical  moral  theory.  The 
historical  school  of  law,  in  its  reaction  against  the  abstract 
revolutionary  and  reformatory  tendencies  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  was  bound  to  recall  Vico's  polemic  against  the 
Platonic  or  Grotian  theory  of  an  ideal  republic  or  a  natural 
law  above  and  outside  history  and  serving  as  a  standard 
for  history,  and  to  recognise  with  Vico  that  law  is  correla- 
tive to  the  whole  social  life  of  a  people  at  a  given  moment 
of  its  history  and  capable  of  being  judged  only  in  relation 
to  it ;  a  living  and  plastic  reality,  in  a  continual  process 
of  change  like  that  of  language.  Finally,  Vico's  provi- 
dence, the  rationality  and  objectivity  of  history,  which 
obeys  a  logic  different  from  that  attributed  to  it  by  the 
fancies  and  illusions  of  the  individual,  acquires  a  more 
prosaic  name,  but  without  changing  its  nature,  in  the 
"  cunning  of  the  reason  "  formulated  by  Hegel :  it  appeared 


CONCLUSION  241 

again,  ingeniously  but  perversely  treated,  in  Schopen- 
hauer's "  cunning  of  the  species,"  and  again,  treated 
with  little  ingenuity  on  a  purely  psychological  method,  in 
Wundt's  so-called  law  of  the  "  heterogenesis  of  ends." 

Almost  all  the  leading  doctrines  of  nineteenth-century 
idealism,  we  have  seen,  may  be  regarded  as  refluxes  of 
Vician  doctrines.  Almost  all ;  for  there  is  one  of  which 
we  find  in  Vico  not  the  premonition  but  the  necessity, 
not  a  temporary  filling  but  a  gap  to  be  filled.  Here  the 
nineteenth  century  is  no  longer  a  reflux  of,  but  an  advance 
upon  Vico ;  and  discordant  voices  of  warning  or  reproach 
rise  up  against  him.  His  distinction  of  the  two  worlds 
of  mind  and  nature,  to  both  of  which  the  criterion  of 
his  theory  of  knowledge,  the  conversion  of  the  truth  with 
the  thing  created,  was  applicable,  but  applicable  to  the 
former  by  man  himself  because  that  world  is  a  world 
created  by  man,  and  therefore  knowable  by  him,  to  the 
second  by  God  the  Creator,  so  that  this  world  is  un- 
knowable by  man  ;  this  distinction  was  not  accepted  by 
the  new  philosophy,  which,  more  Vician  than  Vico, 
made  the  demigod  Man  into  a  God,  lifted  human  thought 
to  the  level  of  universal  mind  or  the  idea,  spiritualised 
or  idealised  nature,  and  tried  to  understand  it  specula- 
tivelyin  the  "  Philosophy  of  Nature  "  as  itself  a  product 
of  mind.  As  soon  as  the  last  remnant  of  transcendence 
was  in  this  way  destroyed,  the  concept  of  progress  over- 
looked by  Vico  and  grasped  and  affirmed  to  some  extent 
by  the  Cartesians  and  their  eighteenth-century  followers 
in  their  superficial  and  rationalistic  manner  shone  out  in 
its  full  splendour. 

But  if  in  this  point  Vico  cannot  stand  the  comparison 
with  later  philosophy,  the  failure  is  amply  atoned  by  the 
full  agreement  between  his  historical  discoveries  and  the 
criticism  and  research  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Above 
all,  he  agrees  with  his  successors  in  his  rules  of  method, 
his  scepticism  as  regards  the  narrative  of  ancient  historians, 

R 


242      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

his  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  documents  and  monu- 
ments over  narrative,  his  investigation  of  language  as  a 
store-house  of  primitive  beliefs  and  customs,  his  social 
interpretation  of  mythology,  his  emphasis  on  spontaneous 
development  rather  than  external  communication  of 
civilisation,  his  care  not  to  interpret  primitive  psychology 
in  the  light  of  modern  psychology  ;  and  so  on.  In  his 
actual  solutions  of  historical  problems  he  also  agrees  with 
later  historians.  These  restated  the  archaic  and  barbaric 
character  of  primitive  Greek  and  Roman  civilisation,  and 
the  aristocratic  and  feudal  tendency  of  its  political  con- 
stitution :  they  took  up  the  view  of  ancient  legal  cere- 
monial as  a  dramatic  poem  containing  allusions  to  the 
actions  of  fighting :  the  transformation  of  the  Roman 
heroes  into  heroes  of  democracy  came  to  an  end  with  the 
Jacobins  in  France  and  their  imitators  in  Italy  and  else- 
where ;  Homer  was  considered  great  in  proportion  to  his 
ruggedness;  the  history  of  Rome  was  reconstructed  chiefly 
on  the  basis  of  Roman  law,  and  the  names  of  the  seven 
kings  appeared  as  symbols  of  institutions  and  the  traditional 
origin  of  Rome  as  a  late  invention  derived  from  Greece  or 
from  Greek  models  :  the  substance  of  this  history  was 
seen  to  consist  in  the  economic  and  juridical  struggle 
between  patriciate  and  plebs,  and  the  plebs  was  derived 
from  the  famuli  or  clients  :  the  struggle  of  the  classes, 
which  Vico  was  the  first  to  illuminate  clearly,  was  recog- 
nised as  a  criterion  of  wide  application  to  the  history  of 
all  time  and  serving  as  an  explanation  of  the  most  sweeping 
social  revolutions  :  the  Middle  Ages,  especially  during 
the  Restoration  which  followed  the  Napoleonic  period, 
exercised  a  powerful  appeal  to  sentiment  and  influence 
on  thought,  being  admired  and  regretted  as  the  antithesis 
of  the  rationalistic  bourgeois  society,  and  understood  in 
consequence  as  the  religious,  aristocratic  and  poetical 
period  discovered  by  Vico,  the  youth  of  modern  Europe. 
Thus  Italy  rediscovered  the  greatness  of  her  own  Dante, 


CONCLUSION  243 

and  the  criticism  of  that  poet  which  Vico  had  initiated 
was  carried  to  completion  by  De  Sanctis.  In  the  same 
way,  Niebuhr  and  Mommsen  brought  to  maturity  his 
view  of  Roman  history ;  Wolf,  his  theory  of  Homer  ; 
Heyne,  Miiller  and  Bachhofen,  his  interpretation  of 
mythology  ;  Grimm  and  other  philologists  his  projected 
reconstruction  of  ancient  life  by  means  of  etymology ; 
Savignyand  the  historical  school,  his  study  of  the  spontane- 
ous development  of  law,  and  his  preference  for  custom 
rather  than  statute  and  code  :  Thierry  and  Fustel  de 
Coulanges  in  France,  Troya  in  Italy  and  a  host  of  scholars 
in  Germany  his  conception  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  of 
feudalism  :  Marx  and  Sorel  his  idea  of  the  struggle  of 
classes  and  the  rejuvenation  of  society  by  a  return  to  a 
primitive  state  of  mind  and  a  new  barbarism  :  and  lastly 
the  superman  of  Nietzsche  recalls  in  some  degree  Vico's 
hero.  These  are  merely  a  few  names  picked  without 
care  and  almost  at  random  ;  for  to  mention  all,  and  each 
in  his  right  place,  would  mean  writing  the  whole  history 
of  the  latest  phase  of  European  thought,  a  history  which 
is  not  yet  finished,  though  it  has  undergone,  under  the 
name  of  "  positivism,"  a  parenthetical  recurrence  of  the 
abstract  and  materialistic  thought  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  a  parenthesis  which  now  however  seems  to  be  at 
an  end. 

These  innumerable  reappearances  of  the  work  of  an 
individual  in  the  work  of  several  generations,  this  parallel- 
ism between  a  man  and  a  century,  justify  a  fanciful 
phrase  with  which  we  might  draw  from  the  later  develop- 
ments in  order  to  describe  Vico  ;  namely  that  he  is  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  nineteenth  century  in  germ.  The 
description  may  serve  to  summarise  our  reconstruction 
and  exposition  of  his  doctrines,  and  to  contribute  towards 
a  right  understanding  of  his  place  in  the  history  of  modern 
philosophy.  He  may  rightly  be  placed  side  by  side 
with  Leibniz,  with  whom  he  has  so  often  been  compared  ; 


244      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

but  not,  as  has  been  believed,  because  of  any  resemblance 
(the  comparisons  made  in  this  belief  have  been  shown  to 
be  false  or  superficial)  but  precisely  because  he  is  unlike 
him  and  in  fact  his  very  opposite.  Leibniz  is  Cartesianism 
raised  to  its  highest  power  ;  an  intellectualist,  in  spite  of 
the  petites  perceptions  and  the  confused  knowledge ;  a 
mechanicist,  in  spite  of  his  dynamism,  which  perhaps 
exists  in  his  fancy  rather  than  in  his  actual  thought ; 
hostile  to  history,  in  spite  of  his  immense  historical 
erudition  ;  blind  to  any  knowledge  of  the  true  nature  of 
language,  though  deeply  interested  in  language  all  his  life  ; 
devoid  of  dialectic,  in  spite  of  his  attempt  to  explain  the 
evil  in  the  universe.  In  relation  to  later  idealism,  the 
Leibnitian  philosophy  stands  as  the  most  complete  ex- 
pression of  the  old  metaphysic  which  had  to  be  tran- 
scended :  that  of  Vico  is  the  sketch  of  the  new  metaphysic, 
only  needing  further  development  and  determination. 
The  one  spoke  to  his  own  century,  and  his  century  crowded 
round  him  and  echoed  his  words  far  and  wide.  The 
other  spoke  to  a  century  yet  to  come  ;  and  the  place  in 
which  he  cried  was  a  wilderness  that  gave  no  answer. 
But  the  crowd  and  the  wilderness  add  nothing  to  and  take 
nothing  from  the  intrinsic  character  of  a  thought. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX  I 
ON  THE  LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  OF  G.  B.  VICO  l 


THE  transformation,  half  rhetorical,  half  mythical,  which 
the  heat  of  the  national  reawakening  effected  in  poets,  philo- 
sophers, and  almost  every  character  of  any  importance  in 
Italian  history,  representing  them  as  patriots,  liberals,  and 
in  open  rebellion  or  secret  revolt  against  the  throne  and  the 
altar,  tried  for  a  time  to  touch  with  its  magic  wand  and  to 
work  its  will  upon  Giambattista  Vico.  It  was  said,  among 
other  things,  that  Vico,  conscious  of  the  severe  blow  dealt 
by  his  thought  to  the  traditional  beliefs  of  religion,  and 
warned  by  his  friends,  took  pains  to  plunge  the  New  Science 
into  such  obscurity  that  only  the  finest  intellects  could  perceive 
its  tendencies.  But  though  this  legend,  energetically  spread 
as  it  was  by  the  patriots  and  republicans  of  1799,  was  believed 
here  and  there,  it  could  not  long  stand  out  against  criticism 
or  even  against  common  sense  ;  and  Cataldo  lannelli  was 
right  to  pass  over  it  with  a  few  words  of  contemptuous  irony.2 
It  is  certain  from  an  objective  point  of  view  that  Vico's 
doctrines  implicitly  contained  a  criticism  of  Christian  tran- 

1  Since  the  preceding  portions  of  this  work  are  strictly  confined  to 
the  analysis  of  Vico's  philosophy  and  give  no  information  as  to  his  life 
and  personal  character,  the  reader  will  not  be  displeased  to  find  in  this 
appendix  a  lecture  delivered  by  myself  upon  the  latter  subject  before 
the  Neapolitan  Societd  di  storia  patria  on  April  14,  1909,  and  later 
written  down  and  published  in  the  Florence  Voce  (ist  year,  No.  43, 
October  7,  1909).     I  add  for  convenience  of  memory  that  Vico  was 
born  at  Naples  on  June  23,  1668  (not  1670  as  he  says  in  his  auto- 
biography), and  died  on  January  23  (not  20  as  all  his  biographers  say), 
1744  :    cf.  the  new  edition  of  the  Autobiografia,  carteggio  e  poesie  varie 
(Bari,  Laterza,  1911),  pp.  101,  123,  124. 

2  See  for  the  whole  question  Croce,  Bibliografia  vichiana,  pp.  91-5. 

247 


248      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VI CO 

scendence  and  theology  as  well  as  of  the  history  of  Christianity. 
From  the  subjective  point  of  view  it  may  be  that  Vico  during 
his  youth  (of  which  we  know  very  little)  was  the  victim  of 
religious  doubts.  Such  doubts  may  have  been  suggested  to 
him  not  only  by  his  reading,  but  by  the  society  of  young  men 
of  his  own  age,  among  whom  "  libertines,"  or  as  contemporary 
literature  still  called  them  "  epicureans  "  or  "  atheists,"  were 
not  uncommon.1  In  a  letter  of  1720  to  Father  Giacchi,  he 
says  that  at  Naples  the  "  weaknesses  and  errors  dating  from 
his  early  youth  "  are  remembered  against  him,  and  that  these, 
fixed  in  the  memory,  became  as  often  happens  "  eternal 
criteria  for  the  judgment  of  everything  beautiful  and  complete 
which  he  subsequently  succeeded  in  doing."  z  What  can  these 
errors  and  weaknesses  have  been  ? 

Again  when  the  De  universi  iuris  uno  principle  et 
fine  uno  appeared,  or  rather  the  "  Synopsis "  which 
announced  its  programme,  "  the  first  voices  "  which  Vico 
heard  raised  against  him  "  were  tinged  with  an  assumed 
piety."  He  found  protection  and  consolation  in  the  face  of 
such  criticism  in  religion  itself,  that  is  to  say  in  the  approval 
of  Giacchi,  "  the  leading  light  of  the  strictest  and  most  holy 
order  of  religious." 3  But  just  as  we  possess  no  detailed 
information  as  to  the  criticisms  levelled  against  him  on  this 
head,  so  we  have  no  certain  knowledge  even  of  the  most  general 
kind  as  to  the  religious  doubts  that  may  have  troubled  him. 
All  Vico's  writings  show  the  Catholic  religion  established  in 
his  heart,  grave,  solid  and  immovable  as  a  pillar  of  adamant  ; 
so  solid  and  so  strong  that  it  remained  absolutely  untouched 
by  the  criticism  of  mythology  inaugurated  by  himself.  Nor 
was  Vico  an  irreproachable  Catholic  in  external  demonstration 
only.  He  not  only  submitted  every  word  he  ever  printed  to 
the  double  censorship,  public  and  private,  of  ecclesiastical 

1  In  the  Giornali  of  Confuorto  (MSS.  in  the  library  of  the  Neapolitan 
Historical  Soc.  xx.  c.  22,  vol.  iii.  f.  in)  under  August  1692,  we  find 
"  certain  civil  persons  were  imprisoned  in  the  prisons  of  St.  Dominic 
by  the  tribunal  of  the  Holy  Office  ;    among  them  the  doctor  Giacinto 
de   Cristofaro,  son   of   the   doctor   Bernardo  ;     many   others   escaped, 
members  of  the  Epicurean  or  Atheist  sect,  who  believe  the  soul  to 
perish  with  the  body."     This  De  Cristofaro  is  the  famous  Neapolitan 
mathematician  and  jurisconsult,  for  whom  see  F.  Amodeo,  Vita  mate- 
matica  napoletana,  part  iii.  (Naples,  Giannini,  1905),  pp.  31-44  ;   he  was 
Vico's  friend.     For  other  notices  of  the  "  Epicureans  "  at  Naples  at 
this  time  see  Carducci,  Opere,  vol.  ii.  pp.  235-6. 

2  Letter  of  October  12,  1720.  s  Ibid. 


APPENDIX  I  249 

friends,  and  led  his  life  as  a  philosopher  and  writer  among 
priestly  vestments  and  monastic  cowls  no  less  than  among 
legal  gowns  ;  he  was  even  scrupulous  enough  to  desist  from 
his  commentary  on  Grotius,  thinking  it  unseemly  that  a 
Catholic  should  annotate  a  Protestant  writer  ; 1  and  so  delicate 
was  his  sense  of  Catholic  honour  that  he  refused  to  admit 
polemic  upon  matters  of  religious  feeling.  "As  to  this  diffi- 
culty," he  says  to  his  critics  of  the  Giornale  dei  letter ati,  "  like 
that  which  you  propound  to  me  concerning  the  immortality 
of  the  soul,  where  it  appears  that  you  have  in  hand  seven 
distinct  arguments,  if  they  had  not  been  prepared  for  me  by 
you,  I  should  judge  that  they  go  deeper  and  penetrate  to  a 
region  which  is  not  only  protected  and  secured  by  my  life  and 
conduct,  but  which  to  defend  is  to  outrage.  But  let  us  return 
to  our  subject."  2  His  Catholicism  was  untainted  by  the 
superstition  so  general  and  so  deeply  rooted  at  the  time, 
especially  at  Naples,  where  St.  Januarius  intervened  as  an 
actor  and  director  in  every  event  of  public  and  private  life. 
It  was  the  Catholicism  of  a  lofty  soul  and  mind,  not  the  faith 
of  a  charcoal-burner.  But  Vico  never  assumed  the  part  of 
censor  of  superstitions.  He  was  content  with  not  speaking 
of  them,  as  one  keeps  silence  concerning  the  failings  of  persons 
or  institutions  which  command  one's  respect. 


n 

Vico's  attitude  towards  social  and  political  life  resembles 
in  more  than  one  respect  his  attitude  towards  religion.  There 
is  in  him  no  trace  of  the  missionary,  the  propagandist,  the 
agitator  or  the  conspirator  as  there  was  in  some  of  the  Renais- 
sance philosophers,  notably  Giordano  Bruno  and  Campanella, 
whom  although — perhaps  because — a  Neapolitan,  Vico  never 
mentions.  Certainly,  his  age  and  his  country  were  not  the 
time  or  place  for  heroes ;  there  was  none  of  that  rapid  social 
change  and  revolution  from  which  heroes  spring.  Political 
parties  however  were  active  in  favour  of  Austria  and  France, 
and  men  were  arising  who  devoted  their  labours  and  their 
lives  to  one  or  other  of  these  parties,  or  were  persecuted  and 
fled  into  exile  :  and  above  all  this  was  the  period  in  which 

1  Autobiografia,  in  Opere,  ed.  Ferrari,  and  ed.  iv.  p.  367. 

*  The  "  subject  "  is  therefore  not  the  religious  objections,  which  he 
regarded  as  a  personal  insult  (Riposta  al  Giornale  dei  letterati,  in  Opp. 
ii.  p.  1 60). 


250      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

culminated  the  struggle  between  Church  and  State,  between 
Naples  and  Rome,  in  the  person  of  Pietro  Giannone,  a  man  of 
whom  Vico  never  speaks,  just  as  he  never  mentions  and  in 
fact  seems  to  ignore  the  entire  movement.  Political  life  rolled 
past  over  his  head,  like  the  sky  and  its  stars,  and  he  never 
wasted  his  strength  in  a  vain  attempt  to  reach  it.  Political 
and  social  controversy,  like  religious,  was  outside  the  sphere 
of  his  activity.  He  was  indeed  a  non-political  person.  We 
cannot  describe  it  as  a  fault  or  a  weakness,  for  every  one 
has  his  limitations ;  one  struggle  excludes  another,  and  one 
labour  makes  others  impossible. 

Not  that  he  avoided  all  contact  with  political  life  and  its 
representatives.     Only  too  often  he  was  compelled  to  pay 
his  respects  to  both,  in  the  form  of  histories,  speeches,  verses 
and  epigrams  in  Latin  and  Italian ;  and  these  alone  would  be 
sufficient  material  for  the  reconstruction  of  Neapolitan  history 
in  all  its  vicissitudes  from  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  :    the  Spanish  viceregency, 
the  conspiracy  and  revolution  attempted  by  the  partisans  of 
Austria,  the  reaction  and  re-establishment  of  the  Spanish 
viceregency,  the  Austrian  conquest,  the  Austrian  viceregency, 
the  Spanish  reconquest  and  the  reign  of  Charles  Bourbon. 
But  Vico,  "  very  pliant  because  of  his  necessity  "  1  and  as 
professor  of  eloquence  in  the  royal  university,  was  compelled 
to  supply  the  literary  compositions  required  by  the  solemnities 
of  the  day,  just  as  the  draper  supplied  hangings  and  the 
plasterer  volutes  and  arabesques.     And  what  hangings  and 
arabesques  he  produced  !    The  Spanish  style  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  still  predominant  in  literature  ;   and  this  fact  is 
alone  almost  enough  to  explain  the  extravagance  and  ornate- 
ness,  as  it  seems  to  us,  of  Vice's  flood  of  panegyrics.    The 
indifference  and  innocence  of  his  own  attitude  may  be  illus- 
trated by  the  passage  in  his  autobiography  where  after  men- 
tioning the  Panegyricus  Philippo  V  inscriptus  composed  by 
himself  to  the  order  of  the  Spanish  viceroy,  the  Duke  of 
Ascalona,  he  goes  on  as  if  it  was  a  mere  nothing,  with  no 
connexion  but  a  simple  "  soon  after  "  :    "  soon  after,  this 
kingdom  having  passed  under  the  rule  of  Austria,  the  lord 
Count  Wirrigo  of  Daun,  at  that  time  governor  of  the  imperial 
armies  in  this  country,  ordered  me"  to  compose  inscriptions  for 
the  expiatory  monuments  to  Guiseppe  Capece  and  Carlo  di 
Sangro,2  the  two  rebels  against  Philip  V.  executed  by  the 

1  Opp.  vi.  p.  20.  2  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  394. 


APPENDIX  I  251 

previous  government  some  years  before  in  the  suppression  of 
the  conspiracy  of  Macchia  described  by  Vico  from  the  Bourbon 
point  of  view  in  his  De  Parthenopea  coniuratione. 

But  this  implies  no  baseness  of  character  on  Vico's  part. 
It  must  be  said  that  in  these  writings  of  his,  orator  and 
panegyrist  though  he  is,  he  can  never  be  called  a  flatterer. 
The  flatterer,  the  man  without  a  conscience,  reviles  and 
calumniates  the  enemies  of  the  man  he  is  praising,  or  even 
strikes  the  conquered :  and  this  is  servility.  But  Vico,  who 
though  he  knew  who  the  Italian  or  Neapolitan  was  that  sent 
to  the  Ada  Lipsiensia  the  note  injurious  to  himself,  and  might 
easily  have  ruined  him,  since  the  note  was  anti-Catholic  in 
tendency,  generously  refused  to  reveal  his  name,1  gave  no 
doubt  his  services  as  professor  of  eloquence  but  refrained 
from  trafficking  in  the  interests  of  the  patrons  whom  he  praised. 
Of  the  Life  of  Antonio  Car  of  a  which  he  composed  for  a  com- 
mission and  married  one  of  his  daughters  on  the  proceeds,  he 
says  that  the  work  was  "  tempered  by  honour  towards  the 
subject,  reverence  towards  princes  and  the  just  claims  of 
truth."  2  And  to  return  to  the  case  of  Capece  and  Sangro 
mentioned  above,  when  he  spoke  in  the  De  Parthenopea 
coniuratione  of  the  death  of  these  two  enemies  to  the  triumphant 
party,  he  shows  here  too  in  various  details  the  nobility  of 
his  spirit :  of  Capece,  who  refused  to  surrender  to  the  Spanish 
soldiers,  he  writes  "  exposing  his  breast  to  death,  and  demand- 
ing death  with  his  warlike  arms,  he  fell  unrepentant,  a  most 
valiant  manner  of  death,  were  it  only  honoured  in  its  cause  " 
(ostentans  pectus  neci  eamque  infensis  armis  efflagitans,  inexo- 
ratus  occubuit,  fortissimum  mortis  genus  si  causa  cohonestasset}. 
Of  Sangro  too,  having  reported  the  rumour  that  Louis  XIV. 
sent  him  a  reprieve  which  arrived  too  late,  he  adds  :  "  whence 
the  condemned  man,  who  had  already  suffered  the  penalty, 
is  the  more  to  be  pitied  "  (unde  maior  damnati  qui  iam  poenas 
Persolverat,  miser  atio]  .3 

He  must  have  known,  and  doubtless  did  know,  that  most 
of  the  persons  whose  praises  he  composed  were  of  very  little 
worth.  To  read  his  panegyrics,  one  would  suppose  that 
Naples  was  adorned  with  a  nobility  resplendent  in  its  virtue, 
cultivation  and  learning  :  and  yet,  in  giving  Father  De  Vitry 
the  information  he  desired  upon  the  condition  of  studies  in 

1  Letter  of  December  4,  1729 :  in  Opp.  vi.  p.  32. 

8  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  366.  3  Opp.  i.  pp.  367,  368. 


35*      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA  V1CO 

Naples,  Vico  did  not  conceal  the  facts  :  "  the  nobles  slumber 
amid  the  enjoyments  of  a  life  of  pleasure."  x  His  pupil 
Antonio  Genovesi  has  preserved  to  us  one  of  his  satirical 
expressions  upon  this  nobility,  often  in  extreme  poverty  but 
always  proud  and  ready  to  go  hungry  at  home  in  order  to  drive 
abroad  in  coaches  sumptuously  dressed.2  With  reference  to 
the  literary  duke  of  Laurenzano,  he  formulated  the  theory 
that  "  noble  "  writers  could  not  fail  of  excellence  :  3  and  yet 
I  have  discovered  among  his  papers  the  manuscript  of  a  book 
by  this  duke,  rewritten  from  end  to  end  by  the  same  Vico.4 
Such  are  the  contradictions  and  the  transactions  into  which 
a  poor  man  falls  when  the  pressure  of  want  has  made  him  timid 
and  cautious  ;  so  that  it  is  not  easy  to  determine  how  far  his 
admiration  was  merely  assumed  at  command  or  by  com- 
plaisance, or  how  far  his  feeling  of  social  inferiority  developed 
into  a  real  admiration  for  those  above  him  in  the  scale,  who 
possessed  riches  and  dignity  and  everything  he  lacked  and 
were  the  "  seigneurs." 

in 

For,  as  is  well  known,  his  financial  state  was  always  of  the 
gloomiest.  The  son  of  a  small  Neapolitan  bookseller,  he  was 
at  first  compelled  to  go  as  a  private  tutor  to  a  wild  town  of 
the  Cilento  ;  later,  returning  to  Naples,  he  tried  in  vain  to 
obtain  the  position  of  secretary  of  the  city,  and  having  in 
1699  been  elected  to  the  chair  of  rhetoric,  he  held  that  position 
for  thirty-six  years  at  an  annual  stipend  of  a  hundred  ducats 
(£17).  His  attempt  to  pass  to  a  chair  of  greater  importance 
in  1723  failed,  whether  owing  to  ill-luck  or  to  inability — he 
recognised  that  he  was  a  "  man  of  little  spirit  in  matters  of 
utility,"  6 — he  was  compelled  to  give  up  hopes  of  academic 
advancement.  He  was  therefore  obliged  to  eke  out  his 
resources  by  literary  work  such  as  we  have  mentioned,  and 
still  more  by  private  lessons  ;  he  not  only  kept  school  at  his 
own  house  as  well  as  at  the  university,  but  he  went  up  and 
down  other  men's  steps  to  teach  grammar  to  youths  or  even 
to  children.  His  family  life  was  not  a  happy  one.  His  wife 
was  illiterate,  and  had  not  the  qualities  with  which  her  sex 

1  Opp.  vi.  p.  9. 

8  He  said  that  many  of  them  "  dragged  their  carriages  with  their 
own  guts  "  (Suppl.  alia  Bibl.  vich.  p.  10). 

8  Opp.  vi.  p.  95.  *  Bibl.  vich.  pp.  27-8. 

*  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  349. 


APPENDIX  I  253 

sometimes  compensates  the  defect ;  she  was  incapable  of  any 
domestic  employment  whatever,  so  that  her  husband  had  to 
take  her  place.  Of  his  children,  one  girl  died  after  a  long 
illness  and  the  heavy  expenses  which  embitter  the  diseases 
of  the  poor ;  one  boy  showed  such  strong  vicious  tendencies 
that  the  father  was  compelled  to  seek  the  intervention  of  the 
police  and  place  him  in  a  house  of  correction.  So  sublimely 
irrational  was  his  fatherly  affection  that  upon  this  occasion 
when  he  saw  from  the  window  the  police  officers  he  had  called 
in,  coming  to  take  his  miserable  and  beloved  son  away,  he  ran 
to  him  crying,  "  my  son,  flee  I  "  l 

He  was  indeed  of  an  extremely  affectionate  disposition ; 
a  fact  which  may  be  gathered  for  instance  from  the  noble  and 
touching  speech  he  composed  on  the  death  of  his  friend  Donna 
Angela  Cimini,  from  the  tone  of  pity  and  indignation  with 
which  in  the  Scienza  Nuova  he  spoke  of  the  oppressed  plebeians 
whose  history  he  is  investigating  or  of  the  tragic  figures  of 
Priam  and  Polyxena,  the  romance  of  which  he  feels  keenly  ; 
and  finally,  from  certain  stylistic  details  scattered  here  and 
there,  such  as  the  aphorism  (no.  xl.)  where  he  says  that  witches 
in  order  to  solemnise  their  rites  "  slay  without  pity  and  cut 
in  pieces  most  lovely  and  innocent  children,"  quite  upset,  in 
the  most  inopportune  but  significant  fashion,  by  the  fate 
of  these  little  persons,  whom  his  excited  imagination  adorns 
with  a  superlative  loveliness.  His  greatest  domestic  happiness 
came  from  his  daughter  Luisa,  a  cultured  and  poetical  soul, 
and  his  son  Gennaro,  who  shared  with  him  and  ultimately 
succeeded  to  his  chair.  When,  in  his  panegyric  on  the  Countess 
of  Althann,  he  calls  ironically  upon  the  philosophers  who 
dispute  as  they  walk  in  pleasant  gardens  or  beneath  painted 
porticoes,  free  from  the  agony  and  weariness  of  "  wives  in 
travail  "  and  "  children  wasting  away  with  disease,"  2  we 
feel  that  he  is  speaking  from  his  own  experience  and  smarting 
under  the  memory  of  domestic  troubles. 

We  often  meet,  especially  in  these  days,  with  men  of  some 
talent  who  consider  themselves  freed  from  this  or  that  humble 
duty  :  and  we  ought  the  more  to  admire  this  man  of  genius 
who  on  the  contrary  accepted  them  every  one,  and  (to  use  a 
phrase  of  Flaubert's)  while  thinking  the  thought  of  a  demigod 
lived  the  life  of  a  townsman  or  even  that  of  a  man  of  the  people. 
He  had  acquired  the  habit  of  reading,  writing,  thinking  and 

1  Villarosa  in  the  additions  to  the  Autobiography  (Opp.  iv.  p.  420). 
*  Opp.  vi.  p.  235. 


254      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

composing  his   works   "  while   discussing  matters  with  his 
friends  amid  the  uproar  of  his  children."  x 

His  health  was  never  very  good :  his  friends  called  him 
"  Mastro  Tisicuzzo  " : 2  very  weak  in  youth,  he  was  in  his  old 
age  afflicted  with  ulcers  in  the  throat  and  pains  in  his  thighs 
and  legs.  In  a  word,  the  repose,  the  peace,  the  tranquillity 
which  other  philosophers  enjoy  all  their  life  or  for  long  periods 
together  was  always  lacking  to  Vico.  He  was  forced  to  play 
both  Martha  and  Mary  :  working  at  every  moment  for  his 
own  and  his  family's  practical  needs  and  working  at  the  same 
time  to  fulfil  the  mission  to  which  he  was  devoted  from  his 
birth  and  to  give  concrete  form  to  the  spiritual  world  that 
moved  within  him. 

IV 

Thus  we  need  not  invent  or  demand  a  heroic  Vico,  looking 
for  him  in  the  life  of  religion,  society  or  politics.  The  true 
hero  is  the  Vico  who  stands  before  us,  the  hero  of  the  philo- 
sophic life.  Others  beside  ourselves  have  noticed  his  love  for 
the  word  "  hero  "  and  all  its  derivatives,  "  heroism,"  "  heroic," 
and  so  on :  and  the  continual  use  and  varied  application  he 
makes  of  it.  Heroism  was  for  him  the  mighty  virgin  force 
which  appears  in  the  beginning  and  reappears  in  the  reflux 
of  history.  This  force  he  must  surely  have  felt  in  himself  as 
he  laboured  for  the  truth  and,  overthrowing  obstacles  of  every 
kind,  opened  up  new  paths  of  science.  It  was  this  force  that 
enabled  him  to  overcome  the  youthful  uncertainties,  fears  and 
defeats  which  sometimes  plunged  him  in  a  profound  individual 
and  cosmic  pessimism,  visible  in  the  poem  entitled  "  Feelings 
of  One  in  Despair,"  to  rise  to  the  certainty  of  scientific  method 
enunciated  in  the  De  nostri  temporis  stttdiorum  ratione  and 
his  first  attempt  at  philosophico-historical  research  repre- 
sented by  the  De  antiquissima  Italorum  sapientia  ;  and  from 
this  point,  abandoning  in  part  his  own  thought  and  weaving  a 
new  tissue  of  what  remained,  led  him  to  the  De  uno  universi 
iuris  principio  et  fine  uno  and  to  the  Scienza  Nuova  "  after 
twenty-five  years,"  as  he  says  of  the  discoveries  contained  in 
that  work,  "  of  unremitting  and  toilsome  thought." 

The  work  completed  by  this  poor  teacher  of  grammar  and 
rhetoric,  by  this  pedagogue  whom  a  contemporary  satirist 

1  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  366. 

1  "  Mr.  Skin-and-bones  "  :  cf.  Bibl.  vich.  p.  87. 


APPENDIX  1  255 

saw  "  lean,  with  a  rolling  eye,  ferule  in  hand,"  l  by  this  un- 
happy paterfamilias,  is  amazing  and  almost  terrifying  ;  such 
is  the  mass  of  mental  power  compressed  into  it.  It  is  a  work 
at  once  reactionary  and  revolutionary  :  reactionary  in  relation 
to  the  present,  by  its  attachment  to  the  traditions  of  the 
ancient  world  and  the  Renaissance  ;  revolutionary  as  against 
the  present  and  the  past  in  laying  the  foundations  of  that 
future  later  to  be  known  as  the  Nineteenth  century. 

Within  the  domain  of  science,  this  humble  man  of  the  people 
became  an  aristocrat :  and  the  "  lordly  style  "  2  which  he 
falsely  ascribed  to  the  wretched  writings  of  the  proud  nobles 
and  pompous  prelates  of  his  day  was  in  reality  his  own.  He 
loathed  the  polite  and  social  literature  which  was  gradually 
spreading  in  France  and  Italy  and  other  European  countries, 
the  "  ladies'  books."  8  But  he  avoided  no  less  that  other 
class  of  treatise  which  we  nowadays  call  "  handbooks,"  which 
explain  in  detail  elementary  definitions  and  facts  ascertained 
by  others ;  books  useless  except  to  the  young.4  Vico,  who 
suffered  quite  enough  from  the  young  within  the  circle  of  his 
school,  saw  no  need  to  sacrifice  to  them  any  part  of  his  own 
inviolable  lif  e  of  science.  The  public  towards  which  he  looked 
was  not  composed  of  boys,  lords  and  ladies.  When  he  wrote, 
his  first  practical  thought  was,  "  what  would  a  Plato,  a  Varro 
or  a  Quintus  Mucius  Scaevola  think  of  the  fruits  of  his 
thought  ?  "  and  secondly,  "  what  will  posterity  think  ?  "  5 
Among  his  contemporaries  he  looked  only  at  the  republic  of 
letters,  the  brotherhood  of  scholars,  the  Academies  of  Europe  : 
a  public  which  did  not  require  him  to  repeat  what  had  been 
already  discovered  and  stated  in  the  course  of  the  history  of 
science,  and  was  perfectly  familiar  to  him,  but  only  demanded 
the  exposition  of  such  thoughts  as  constituted  a  real  advance 
of  knowledge  :  not  voluminous  works,  but  "  little  books,  all 
full  of  original  things."  6  His  public  was  an  ideal  one,  which 
sometimes  in  his  simplicity  he  confused  with  the  actual 
professional  scholars  and  the  critics  of  literary  reviews :  and 
the  mistake  often  caused  him  surprise.  Short  books  on 
metaphysical  subjects  seemed  to  him  to  have  a  peculiar  power, 
as  in  fact  they  have  ;  he  compares  them  very  justly  with 
religious  meditations  "  which  briefly  set  forth  a  small  number 
of  points  "  and  are  more  valuable  for  the  development  of  the 

1  Bibl.  vich.  p.  82.  2  Opp.  vi.  p.  93. 

3  Ibid.  vi.  p.  5.  *  Ibid.  ii.  p.  123. 

5  Ibid.  v.  p.  50  (note).  •  Ibid.  ii.  p.  148. 


256      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

Christian  spirit  than  "  the  most  eloquent  and  lucid  sermons 
of  the  most  gifted  preachers."  x  This  love  of  brevity  inspires 
his  refusal  to  burden  with  many  books  the  republic  of  letters, 
which,  he  says,  is  already  sinking  beneath  the  weight.  He  left 
his  discourses  unpublished,  only  printed  his  De  ratione  out  of  a 
sense  of  duty,  and  often  expressed  a  desire  that  the  Scienza 
Nuova  alone  should  survive  him,  as  the  work  which  summed 
up  in  itself  the  concentrated  and  perfected  fruits  of  all  his 
earlier  efforts. 

His  aristocratic  ideal  was  accompanied  by  the  loftiest 
dignity  and  the  profoundest  loyalty  in  his  conception  of  the 
life  of  science.  From  his  polemics  we  might  compile  a  whole 
catechism  on  the  right  method  of  conducting  literary  con- 
troversy. We  must  aim  at  victory,  he  says,  not  in  the  con- 
troversy but  in  the  truth ;  hence  he  desires  that  it  should  be 
conducted  "  in  the  calmest  manner  of  reasoning,"  because  "  he 
who  is  strong  does  not  threaten,  and  he  who  is  right  does  not 
use  insults  "  ;  the  dispute  must  at  any  rate  be  interspersed 
with  peaceful  words  "  showing  that  the  minds  of  the  dis- 
putants are  placid  and  tranquil,  not  excited  and  perturbed." 
To  opponents  whose  objections  are  vague  he  replies,  "  the 
judgment  is  in  too  general  terms :  and  serious  men  never 
deign  to  reply  except  to  particular  and  determinate  criticisms 
made  upon  them."  When  these  same  opponents  appeal  to 
the  "  refined  taste  of  the  age,  which  has  banished,"  etc.,  etc., 
he  replies  contemptuously,  "  a  grave  criticism  this,  in  truth  : 
it  is  no  criticism  at  all.  In  thus  taking  refuge  from  one's 
opponents  before  the  tribunal  of  one's  own  judgment,  by 
saying  that  what  they  say  is  a  thing  of  which  one  has  no  idea, 
from  an  opponent  one  becomes  the  judge."  He  refused  to 
rely  upon  his  authorities,  but  yet  did  not  undervalue  them  ; 
authority  ought  to  "  make  us  attentive  to  seek  the  causes 
which  could  have  induced  authors,  especially  the  most  weighty, 
to  adopt  such  and  such  opinions."  Again,  accused  of  attribut- 
ing errors  to  philosophers  so  as  to  be  able  to  refute  them  witf 
ease,  like  Aristotle,  he  protests  with  dignity  :  "  I  would  rather 
enjoy  my  own  small  and  simple  stock  of  knowledge  than  be 
compared  in  bad  faith  with  a  great  philosopher."  His 
moderation  may  be  illustrated  by  his  splendid  eulogy  of 
Descartes,  though  he  spent  the  best  part  of  his  mental  powers 
hi  opposing  him.  His  loyalty  is  shown  by  his  prompt  recogni- 

1  For  instance  in  his  letter  to  Saliani,  November  18,  1725,  published 
in  Bibl.  vich.  pp.  97-8,  the  autograph  being  in  my  possession. 


APPENDIX  I  257 

tion  of  his  own  errors  :  "I  admit,"  he  says  at  one  point  to  the 
critics  of  the  Giornale  dei  letter ati,  "  that  my  distinction  is 
faulty."  *  "  The  reader  must  not  think  it  ostentatious  in  us  " 
(he  writes  in  the  second  Scienza  Nuova),  "  that  not  satisfied 
with  the  favourable  judgments  of  such  men  as  these  upon 
our  works,  we  yet  disapprove  and  reject  these  works.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  a  proof  of  the  high  veneration  and  respect 
in  which  we  hold  these  men.  For  rude  and  haughty  writers 
uphold  their  works  even  against  the  just  accusations  and 
reasonable  corrections  of  others  :  some,  who  by  chance  are 
of  a  small  spirit,  sate  themselves  with  the  favourable  judg- 
ments they  receive  and  because  of  these  go  no  further  towards 
perfection  :  but  in  our  case  the  praise  of  great  minds  has 
increased  our  courage  to  amend,  to  complete,  and  even  to 
recast  in  a  better  form  this  work  of  ours."  2 

His  scientific  life  was  upright,  worthy  of  a  serious  searcher 
after  truth  ;  his  emotional  life  disturbed  and  restless,  worthy 
of  one  who  sees  face  to  face  the  truth  he  has  long  sought  and 
desired,  and  rejoices  in  the  power  of  laying  it  before  mankind. 
Hence  his  lofty  poetry,  expressed  not  in  verse  but  in  prose, 
and  especially  in  the  Scienza  Nuova,  "  Vico  is  a  poet,"  writes 
Tommaseo  :  "he  brings  fire  from  smoke,  and  lively  images 
from  metaphysical  abstractions  :  he  reasons  as  he  narrates 
and  depicts  while  he  reasons  :  over  the  mountain-tops  of 
thought  he  does  not  walk,  he  flies  ;  and  in  one  sentence  he 
often  compresses  more  lyrical  feeling  than  may  be  found  in 
many  an  ode."3  De  Sanctis  saw  in  the  Scienza  Nuova  the 
progress  of  a  poem,  almost  a  new  Divina  commedia.  Sublime 
like  Dante,  he  was  more  severe  than  Dante  himself  ;  if  the 
lips  of  the  Ghibelline  show  at  times  the  flicker  of  "  a  passing 
smile,"  Vico  looks  at  history  with  a  face  "  that  never  smiles." 
Moreover,  the  man  whose  style  has  been  so  often  criticised 
is  not  a  commonplace  writer ;  he  was  as  careful  a  student 
of  pure  Tuscan 4  as  he  was  a  fine  connoisseur,  according  to 
Capasso,  of  Latin  phraseology.5  But  he  was  faulty  in  the 
arrangement  of  his  books,  because  his  mind  did  not  master 
all  the  philosophical  and  historical  material  it  had  accumu- 

1  See  the  Riposte  in  Opp.  ii.  passim. 

2  Opp.  v.  p.  10. 

3  G.  B.  Vico  e  il  suo  secolo  in  the  volume  La  Storia  civile  nella  lettera- 
tura  (Turin,  Loescher,  1872),  p.  104  :  cf.  a  judgment  on  Vico  as  a  writer, 
ibid.  pp.  9-10. 

*  Opp.  iv.  pp.  333-4  ;   vi.  pp.  41,  140. 
5  Bibl.  vich.  p.  87. 

S 


258      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

lated  ;  he  wrote  carelessly  because  wildly  and  as  if  possessed 
by  a  demon  :  and  hence  arise  the  lack  of  proportion  and  the 
confusion  in  the  various  parts  of  his  work,  within  single  pages 
and  single  paragraphs.  He  often  gives  the  impression  of  a 
bottle  of  water  quickly  inverted,  in  which  the  liquid  trying  to 
issue  forth  so  presses  against  the  narrow  opening  "  that  it 
comes  out  painfully,  drop  by  drop."  Painfully,  by  fragments, 
and  disjointedly.  One  idea  while  he  is  expressing  it  recalls 
another,  that  a  fact,  and  that  another  fact :  he  tries  to  say 
everything  at  once,  and  parenthesis  branches  off  into  paren- 
thesis in  a  manner  to  make  one's  brain  reel.  But  these 
chaotic  periods,  weighted  as  they  are  with  original  thoughts, 
are  no  less  woven  of  striking  phrases,  statuesque  words, 
phrases  full  of  emotion,  and  picturesque  images.  A  bad 
writer,  if  you  will,  but  his  is  the  kind  of  bad  writing  of  which 
only  great  writers  possess  the  secret. 


The  philosophical  heroism  of  Vico  asserts  itself  not  only 
in  the  internal  struggle  with  himself  for  the  elaboration  of 
his  science.  It  was  exposed  to  other  and  sterner  trials.  The 
position  reached  by  his  thought,  opposed  as  it  was  to  the 
present,  and  while  apparently  reactionary  turned  in  reality 
towards  the  future,  inevitably  prevented  him  from  being  under- 
stood. No  doubt  this  is  the  fate  of  every  man  of  genius  :  his 
inmost  thought  is  never  understood,  even  when  social  fortune 
seems  to  favour  him,  even  when  he  arouses  enthusiasm  and 
finds  a  host  of  disciples  and  imitators.  The  words  which 
Hegel  is  said  to  have  uttered  on  his  deathbed — "  one  only  of 
my  pupils  understood  me,  and  he  misunderstood  me  "- 
admirably  express  this  historical  necessity  :  the  man  whcm 
his  age  fully  understands  dies  with  his  age.  And  yet  the  dis- 
proportion between  the  value  of  a  man's  thought  and  his 
contemporaries'  failure  to  understand  it  has  seldom  if  ever 
been  greater  than  in  Vice's  case.  If  he  had  been  free  from 
other  causes  of  discontent,  this  alone  would  have  been  sufficient. 
The  "  desire  for  praise,"  which  in  other  than  commonplace 
minds  is  a  desire  to  see  what  they  think  true  and  good  shared, 
approved  and  universalised  among  other  minds,  was  always 
with  him  a  "  vain  desire." 

He  was  the  more  afflicted  by  this  misunderstanding  and 
indifference  because,  as  we  may  well  suppose,  he  was  fully 


APPENDIX  I  259 

conscious  of  the  importance  of  his  own  discoveries.  He  knew 
that  Providence  had  entrusted  to  him  a  lofty  mission  :  he 
knew  himself  to  be  "  born  for  the  glory  of  his  country,  and 
therefore  in  Italy  ;  since,  being  born  there  and  not  in  Morocco, 
he  became  a  scholar."  1  When  he  published  the  Scienza 
Nuova,  he  believed  that  he  had  fired  a  mine  whose  loud  ex- 
plosion he  expected  every  minute.  Nothing  happened : 
nobody  mentioned  it  to  him  :  so  that  he  wrote  some  days 
later,  to  a  friend  :  "In  publishing  my  work  in  this  city  I 
seem  to  have  launched  it  upon  a  desert.  I  avoid  all  public 
places,  so  as  not  to  meet  the  persons  to  whom  I  have  sent  it, 
and  if  by  chance  I  do  meet  them,  I  greet  them  without 
stopping  ;  for  when  this  happens,  these  people  give  me  not 
the  faintest  sign  that  they  have  received  my  book,  and  so 
confirm  my  impression  of  having  published  it  in  a  wilderness."  a 
He  had  frankly  expected  a  swift  and  immediate  effect :  he 
had  hoped  to  find,  among  his  contemporaries  and  acquaint- 
ances at  Naples,  minds  ready  and  intellects  open  to  receive 
and  bear  fruit  of  his  thoughts  :  and  he  hoped  this  of  monks 
engaged  in  composing  and  learning  by  rote  wordy  sermons, 
poetasters  rhyming  in  sonnets  and  advocates  compiling  second- 
hand speeches  ! 

Instead  of  this,  he  found  many  sceptical  and  indifferent, 
and  several  inclined  to  laugh.  His  Diritto  universale  had  been 
as  Metastasio  informs  us  3  generally  "  blamed  for  obscurity  " 
on  its  publication ;  it  was  not  widely  read  and  was  hastily 
criticised  for  the  extravagances  which  an  inattentive  and 
superficial  reading  revealed  at  every  point.4  Father  Paoli, 
to  whom  the  author  had  given  a  copy,  wrote  in  it  a  couplet 
making  a  joke  of  its  unintelligibility.5  The  Scienza  Nuova 
was  in  an  even  worse  case.  We  know  that  Nicola  Capasso, 
a  scholar  and  well  disposed  towards  Vico,  on  trying  to  read 
it  fancied  he  had  lost  his  wits,  and  by  way  of  a  joke  hurried 
off  to  his  doctor  Cirillo,  to  have  his  pulse  felt.6  A  Neapolitan 
nobleman  when  asked  by  Finetti  at  Venice  what  opinion  was 
held  of  Vico  at  Naples,  said  that  for  a  time  he  had  passed  for 
a  really  learned  man,  but  that  later  his  strange  opinions  had 
won  him  the  reputation  of  an  eccentric.  "  And  when  he 
published  the  Scienza  Nuova  ?  "  insisted  Finetti.  "Oh,  by 

1  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  385. 

2  Letter  to  Giacchi,  November  25,  1725,  in  Opp.  vi.  p.  28. 

3  Bibl.  vich.  p.  40.  *  Opp.  vi.  p.  20. 
6  Bibl.  vich.  p.  26.                                              •  Ibid.  p.  87. 


260      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

then, ' '  replied  the  other, ' '  he  was  quite  mad ! " 1  His  detractors 
even  attacked  him  in  the  modest  profession  by  which  he  earned 
his  living ;  they  said  he  was  "  good  at  teaching  youths  who 
had  completed  their  course,  that  is  to  say  when  they  already 
knew  all  they  needed,"  or  again,  more  insidiously,  that  he 
was  fitted  less  for  teaching  than  for  "  giving  good  advice  to 
the  teachers  themselves ;  "  2  so  that  they  recognised  his 
superiority  only  to  use  it  in  damaging  his  private  interests. 


VI 

The  indifference  of  the  public  and  the  insincerity  or 
malignity  of  critics  could  not  for  Vico  be  compensated  by  the 
friends  and  appreciative  readers  of  whom  Vico  had  a  certain 
number.  How  indeed  could  it  have  been  otherwise,  when  he 
cultivated  them  artificially  with  such  care  and  anxiety  ? 
Consider  for  instance  the  way  in  which  he  cultivated  the 
friendship  of  Giacchi  the  Capucin.  He  praised  his  "  admirable 
works,"  his  "  most  divine  talents,"  the  "  rare  sublimity  " 
of  his  "  marvellous  and  divine  ideas."  He  tells  him  that  he 
has  given  to  the  scholars  of  the  city  the  eulogistic  letter  sent 
to  him  by  Giacchi  and  that  they  all  admire  "  the  sublime 
workmanship  of  the  conception  "  ;  and  yet  he  himself  used 
to  rewrite  in  scholar's  Latin  the  inscriptions  Giacchi  composed 
in  monk's  Latin  !  3  On  another  occasion  he  wrote  that  the 
praises  of  a  Giacchi  had  excited  envy  and  had  in  certain 
quarters  been  described  as  flatteries.  He  took  no  less  pains  :o 
propitiate  the  Archbishop  of  Bari,  Muzio  di  Gaeta,  a  conceited 
creature  full  of  his  own  merits  and  incapable  of  speaking  except 
about  himself.  Muzio  wrote  a  panegyric  on  Pope  Benedict 
XIII.,  a  work  of  which,  though  Vico  praised  it  again  and  again, 
he  had  never  heard  enough,  and  was  always  covertly  or  openly 
demanding  new  praises.  So  Vico  used  to  besprinkle  him 
patiently  with  the  desired  fluid  :  "  the  marvellous  work  of 
Your  Excellency  "  ;  his  "  lordly  diction  "  ;  his  "  Demosthenic 
digressions  "  ;  his  eloquence,  that  philosophic  speech  employed 
in  Greece  by  the  Academic  school,  in  Rome  by  Cicero,  and 
"  among  the  Italians  by  none  but  Your  Excellency !  "  To 
the  advocate  Francesco  Solla,  who  had  been  his  pupil  and  had 

1  Bibl.  vich.  p.  86 :  cf.  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  416. 
*  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  416. 

8  Published  by  me  in  Napoli  nobilis,  xiii.  (1904),  f.  i.,  and  again  in 
Secondo  suppl.  alia  Bibl.  vich.  pp.  70-2. 


APPENDIX  I  261 

subsequently  retired  into  the  country,  he  hinted  that  the 
Scienza  Nuova  looked  towards  him  as  one  of  the  few  men  in 
the  world  possessed  of  a  mind  penetrating  enough  to  receive 
it  unhampered  by  any  prejudices  concerning  the  origin  of 
mankind.1  Such  were  the  guileless  artifices  and  the  pitiful 
little  schemes  by  which  he  contrived  to  give  an  illusory  satis- 
faction to  his  thirst  for  recognition  and  praise,  and  a  narcotic 
to  his  overwrought  nerves.  But  the  final  results  were  miser- 
able enough.  Giacchi's  letters  contain  not  a  word  to  show 
that  he  had  ever  grasped  one  of  Vice's  doctrines  or  even  that 
he  had  examined  them  with  any  serious  interest.  Monsignor 
di  Gaeta,  after  a  labyrinth  of  circumlocutions,  admits  that 
he  "  admired  more  than  he  understood  "  of  Vico's  works  ;  2 
and  possibly  he  was  so  much  occupied  in  admiring  his  own 
prose  that  he  never  read  them  at  all.  Solla,  in  whom  Vico 
placed  such  hopes,  thought  the  discourse  on  the  death  of 
Angela  Cimini  superior  to  all  the  author's  other  works,  in- 
cluding the  Scienza  Nuova  itself.  Vico  received  a  no  less 
incautious  compliment  from  another  admirer ;  though  a 
warm  and  affectionate  one, — Esteban.3  Compliments  of  a 
vague  and  unintelligent  kind  sometimes  reached  him  in  return 
for  the  copies  of  his  works  which  he  sent  not  only  to  Neapolitan 
scholars  but  to  those  of  Rome,  Pisa,  Padua  and  even  Germany, 
Holland  and  England  :  he  sent  a  copy  to  Isaac  Newton.4 
Generally,  however,  these  gifts  were  received  in  contemptuous 
silence.  At  most,  Vico  acquired  the  reputation  of  a  scholar 
among  hundreds  of  scholars,  a  man  of  letters  among  thousands 
of  similar  men  ;  a  learned  man,  but  nothing  more. 

Among  the  modest,  the  insignificant,  and  the  young,  Vico 
no  doubt  had  strong  admirers.  Among  these  were  the  poet, 
later  a  sacred  orator,  Gherardo  de  Angelis,  Solla  and  Esteban 
whom  we  have  mentioned,  the  monk  Nicola  Concina  of  Padua, 
and  some  more.  But  though  their  affection  was  strong  their 
intelligence  was  weak.  Even  Concina  admitted  while  rhapso- 
dising his  enthusiasm  that  he  did  not  very  clearly  comprehend 
his  master :  "  Oh,  what  fruitful  and  sublime  lights  are  here  ! 
If  only  I  had  the  talent  to  make  use  of  them,  to  comprehend 
their  depth  and  the  wonderful  art  of  which  I  seem  to  catch  a 
glimpse  !  "  5  The  best  service  that  these  friends  could  do  him 
was  to  soothe  with  kindly  words  Vico's  embittered  spirit, 

1  Opp.  vi.  p.  17.  2  Ibid.  p.  no. 

8  Bibl.  vich.  pp.  103-5.  4  Opusc.,  ed.  Villarosa,  ii.  p.  277. 

6  Opp.  vi.  p.  145. 


262      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

if  they  could  not  do  so  by  following  his  inmost  thoughts. 
This  is  what  Esteban  does  at  the  close  of  the  letter  in  which 
he  excuses  himself  for  his  foolish  remark  on  the  funeral  speech 
of  Angela  Cimini  in  phrases  he  must  have  gathered  from  the 
master's  lips:  "Be  confident,  Sir,  that  Providence,  through 
channels  unimagined  by  yourself,  will  cause  to  spring  up  for 
you  a  perennial  fountain  of  immortal  glory !  "  x  The  Jesuit 
Father  Domenico  Lodovico,  who  wrote  the  couplet  inscribed 
beneath  Vice's  portrait,  on  receiving  the  Scienza  Nuova  sent 
to  the  author  with  much  sound  sense  a  little  wine  from  the 
cellar  and  a  little  bread  from  the  oven  of  the  Jesuit  house  of 
the  Nunziatella,  together  with  a  graceful  letter  begging  the 
author  to  accept  "  these  trifles,  simple  as  they  are,  since  the 
infant  Jesus  himself  did  not  refuse  the  rude  offerings  of  pastoral 
peasants."  He  suggested  too  that  at  the  side  of  the  alphabet 
in  the  symbolic  frontispiece  to  the  work  a  little  dwarf  should 
be  added  in  the  posture  of  one  dumb  with  astonishment  like 
Dante's  mountaineer,  and  that  beneath  him  should  be  written, 
"  with  a  significant  diaeresis,"  the  name  Lodo-vico  !  2  Among 
the  young  men  of  his  school  there  were  some  who,  nourished 
upon  his  doctrines,  were  ready  to  defend  their  master  with 
their  swords  ; 3  but  we  all  know  the  value  of  these  youthful 
enthusiasms.  If  these  scholars  had  really  assimilated  Vice's 
doctrines  or  any  part  of  them,  we  should  have  found  traces 
of  it  in  the  literature  or  culture  of  the  next  generation  afte 
Vico  ;  but  such  traces  are  entirely  absent.  Hardly  a  single 
one  of  his  formulae,  his  historical  statements,  or  conceptions 
even  superficially  understood  is  to  be  found  in  Conti  at  Venice, 
Concina  at  Padua,  Ignazio  Luzan  in  Spain — though  the  last 
named  was  living  at  Naples  when  the  Scienza  Nuova  was 
published  ;  4  or  even,  within  the  author's  own  neighbourhood, 
in  Genovesi  or  Galiani. 

Envy,  insincerity,  gossip,  calumny  and  stupidity  provoked 
violent  outbursts  of  anger  on  Vice's  part.  He  confesses  this 
fault  in  his  autobiography  where  he  says  that  he  inveighed 
in  too  severe  a  manner  against  the  errors  of  conception  or 
doctrine  or  the  incivility  of  his  literary  rivals,  when  in  Christian 
charity  and  as  a  true  philosopher  he  ought  to  have  ignored 
or  pardoned  them.5  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  this  fault  did  not 

1  Bibl.  vich.  p.  105. 

*  "  I  praise  Vico."     Letter  published  by  me  in  Bibl.  vich.  p.  107. 
8  Bibl.  vich.  pp.  87-8.  *  Ibid.  p.  44. 

6  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  416  :  cf.  the  evidence  of  a  pupil  in  Bibl. 
vich.  p.  89. 


APPENDIX  I  263 

greatly  distress  him  :  he  thought  it  rather  an  ornament. 
The  funeral  speech  for  Angela  Cimini  contained  a  kind  of 
hymn  to  anger,  the  "  heroic  wrath  which  in  noble  spirits  dis- 
turbs and  shakes  to  the  depths  by  its  boiling  all  those  evil 
thoughts  of  the  mind,  which  beget  the  vile  swarm  of  fraud, 
deceit  and  falsehood,  and  renders  the  hero  frank,  truthful 
and  loyal ;  and  thus  making  him  a  partisan  of  truth,  arms 
him  as  the  valiant  knight  of  reason  to  do  battle  with  wrong 
and  offence."  1 

Although  in  his  writings  he  guards  "  with  all  his  power  " 
against  falling  into  this  passion  2  we  feel  a  scarcely  repressed 
torrent  of  wrath  in  his  private  letters  whenever  he  denounces 
the  "  miserable  pedants  "  who  "  love  learning  more  than 
truth,"  or  the  common  tendency  of  man  to  be  "  all  memory 
and  imagination,"  and  so  forth.  In  conversation  also,  it 
seems,  he  could  be  very  violent.  When  in  1736  Damiano 
Romano  published  a  work  controverting  his  theory  of  the 
Twelve  Tables,  Vico,  although  according  to  Romano  himself 
he  had  been  spoken  of  as  "  most  learned  "  and  "  most  famous," 
together  with  other  titles  of  respect,  "  tore  the  book  to  pieces 
with  his  teeth  in  a  way  that  made  every  one  present  tremble 
with  horror,"  finding  a  sign  of  the  deepest  malignity  in  the 
fact  that  "  a  lad  like  myself  should  join  issue  with  him."  3 
But  his  outbursts  of  wrath  were  succeeded  by  fits  of  the 
deepest  dejection.  In  a  sonnet  he  speaks  of  himself  as  over- 
whelmed by  that  fate  "  which  the  unjust  hate  of  others 
often  creates,"  and  says  that  for  this  reason  he  has  separated 
himself  from  human  society  to  live  with  himself  alone.  Some- 
times he  shakes  off  this  torpor  for  a  moment :  then,  he  says  : 

I  draw  within  myself  again,  and  pressed 
By  heavy  cares,  return  to  where  I  stood  :  4 
My  fate  and  not  my  fault  I  do  lament. 

VII 

But  among  all  these  troubles,  obstacles  and  disappoint- 
ments, in  the  midst  of  this  sadness  which  often  draped  his  life 
in  black,  Vico  enjoyed  one  of  the  loftiest  joys  accessible  to 
man  ;  the  "  life  of  meditation  "  freed  and  purified  from 

1  Opp.  vi.  p.  254.  2  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  416. 

3  Bibl.  vich.  p.  88. 

4  Sonnet  published  by  G.  Gentile,  77  Figlio  di  G.  B.  Vico  (Naples, 
Pierro,  1905),  p.  173. 


264       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

passion,  lived  by  man  in  solitude  without  the  turbulent  and 
grievous  company  of  the  body  "  :  the  life  of  security,  because 
it  is  "  made  one  with  the  soul  always  ready  and  present  which 
shows  man  his  being  rooted  in  the  Eternal  that  measures  all 
times  and  walking  in  the  Infinite  that  comprehends  all  finite 
things  ;  it  crowns  him  with  an  eternal  and  immeasurable  joy 
not  restricted  invidiously  to  certain  places  nor  grudgingly  to 
certain  times  ;  but  it  can  grow  up  within  himself  only  if 
without  envy  of  rivalry  or  fear  of  diminution  it  spreads  and 
communicates  itself  unceasingly  to  more  and  more  human 
minds."  1  That  he  has  attained  truth  he  never  doubts, 
though  he  never  ceases  to  elaborate  it  further ;  with  the 
system  presented  in  the  work  on  Universal  Law,  his  mind,  he 
says,  "  rested  content."  2  The  weariness  and  even  the  pain 
he  had  suffered  were  dear  to  him,  because  through  them  he 
arrived  at  his  discoveries  :  "I  bless  the  twenty-five  full  years 
I  have  spent  in  meditation  upon  this  subject,  in  the  midst 
of  the  adversities  of  fortune  and  the  checks  I  have  often 
received  from  the  unhappy  example  of  great  thinkers  who 
have  attempted  new  and  weighty  discoveries."  3  How  could 
he  have  done  anything  but  bless  these  fatigues,  pains  and 
adversities,  if,  whenever  he  rose  above  the  passionate  per- 
turbations of  the  empirical  man  and  the  struggles  of  the 
practical  man,  his  mind  showed  him  the  inevitable  necessity 
of  his  toil  and  of  his  sufferings,  two  necessities  fused  into  one 
another  so  as  to  become  one  and  indivisible  ? 

His  own  philosophical  doctrine  then  brought  him  the 
remedy  for  his  ills,  and  worked  in  his  spirit  the  catharsis  of 
liberation  ;  the  doctrine  of  the  immanent  Providence,  or  as 
it  was  later  called,  historical  necessity,  which  was  his  central 
thought.  "  Praise  be  to  Providence  for  ever,  which,  when  the 
weak  sight  of  mortals  sees  in  it  nothing  but  stern  justice, 
then  most  of  all  is  at  work  on  a  crowning  mercy  !  For  by  this 
task  I  see  that  I  am  clothed  upon  with  a  new  man  ;  I  feel 
that  everything  that  goaded  me  to  bewail  my  hard  lot  and  to 
denounce  the  corruption  of  literature  that  has  caused  that 
lot,  has  vanished ;  for  this  corruption  and  this  lot  have 
strengthened  me  and  enabled  me  to  perfect  my  task.  And 
more,  it  may  perhaps  not  be  true,  but  it  would  please  me, 
were  it  true,  that  this  labour  has  filled  me  with  a  certain 
spirit  of  heroism,  through  which  no  fear  of  death  any  longer 

1  Opp.  vi.  p.  287.  -  Ibid.  p.  1 8. 

3  Ibid.  pp.  153-4. 


APPENDIX  I  265 

disturbs  me  and  my  mind  feels  no  disquietude  at  the  words 
of  my  rivals.  Lastly,  it  has  established  me  as  upon  a  mighty 
rock  of  adamant  before  the  judgment  of  God,  who  rewards 
the  work  of  creation  by  the  approval  of  the  wise,  who  are 
always  and  everywhere  few  in  numbers  .  .  .  men  of  the 
loftiest  intellect,  of  a  learning  all  their  own,  generous  and 
great-hearted,  whose  only  labour  is  to  enrich  with  deathless 
works  the  commonwealth  of  letters."  *  Thus  Providence 
showed  him  the  necessity  of  all  that  had  befallen  or  should 
befall  him  in  his  life,  taught  him  resignation  and  promised 
him  glory. 

VIII 

So  the  hot-tempered  man  became  at  last  tolerant :  tolerant 
with  that  tolerance,  that  lofty  indulgence  which  must  not  be 
confused  with  common  toleration.  The  University,  in  which 
he  had  hoped  for  advancement  and  towards  which  he  directed 
the  thought  of  his  earlier  works,  would  have  none  of  him  ; 
he  retired  within  himself  to  think  out  the  Scienza  Nuova. 
Now,  says  he  with  a  smile  in  which  we  may  still  see  a  trace 
of  bitterness,  I  owe  this  work  to  the  University,  which,  by 
judging  me  unworthy  of  the  chair  and  not  wishing  me  to  be 
"  occupied  in  treating  paragraphs,"  gave  me  leisure  for 
meditation  :  "  what  greater  obligation  could  I  have  ?  "  2 
A  friend,  Sostegni  the  Florentine,  in  a  sonnet  to  Vico,  let  slip 
some  words  in  condemnation  of  the  city  of  Naples  for  making 
so  little  of  her  distinguished  son.  Vico  in  his  reply  justifies 
his  native  place  in  noble  words,  as  being  stern  towards  him 
because  she  expected  and  desired  much  of  him  : 

Stern  mother,  she  caresses  not  her  son, 

Lest  so  she  fall  into  obscurity, 

But  gravely  listens,  watching  as  he  speaks.3 

This  was  the  spirit  that  found  expression  in  the  Auto- 
biography, a  work  which  has  been  misjudged  and  in  fact 
entirely  misunderstood  by  Ferrari,  who  censures  its  prevailing 
teleological  tendency  and  laments  the  absence  of  a  "  psycho- 
logical "  explanation  of  Vice's  life  ; 4  as  if  Vico  had  not  himself 
explained  that  he  was  writing  it  from  a  "  philosophical  " 

1  Opp.  vi.  pp.  29-30. 

*  Ibid.  p.  29.  3  Ibid.  p.  446. 

4  In  the  Introduction  to  vol.  iv.  of  the  Opere. 


266      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

point  of  view.1  And  what  is  the  meaning  of  a  philosophical 
treatment  of  a  philosopher's  life  but  an  understanding  of  the 
objective  necessity  of  his  thought  and  a  perception  of  the 
scaffolding  it  involves  even  where  the  author  at  the  moment 
of  thinking  did  not  clearly  perceive  it  ?  Vico  "  meditates 
upon  the  causes,  natural  and  moral,  and  upon  the  occasions 
of  his  fortunes  ;  he  meditates  upon  the  inclinations  or  aversions 
he  felt  from  childhood  towards  this  or  that  branch  of  study  ; 
he  meditates  upon  the  opportunities  or  hindrances  which 
assisted  or  retarded  his  progress  ;  he  meditates,  lastly,  upon 
certain  efforts  of  his  own  in  right  directions  which  bore  fruit 
in  the  reflections  upon  which  he  built  his  final  work,  the 
Scienza  Nuova,  which  work  was  to  demonstrate  that  his 
literary  life  was  bound  to  have  been  what  it  was  and  not 
different. ' '  2  Vico's  A utobiography  is,  in  a  word,  the  application 
of  the  Scienza  Nuova  to  the  life  of  its  author,  the  course  of  his 
own  individual  history  :  and  its  method  is  as  just  and  true 
as  it  is  original.  Vico  succeeded  in  part  only  of  his  attempt, 
and  could  not  form  a  criticism  and  history  of  himself  to  the 
same  extent  to  which  a  modern  critic  and  historian  is  in  a 
position  to  do — whose  efforts  will  again  be  improved  upon  by 
those  of  the  future — is  too  obvious  to  need  emphasising. 
The  Autobiography  itself  concludes  with  a  blessing  upon  the 
author's  hardships,  a  profession  of  faith  in  Providence  and  a 
sure  expectation  of  fame  and  glory. 


IX 

In  the  last  years  of  his  life  Vico,  enfeebled  by  age,  domestic 
trouble  and  illness,  "  entirely  gave  up  his  studies  "  :  8 

My  pen  is  slipping  from  my  palsied  grasp  ; 
The  door  of  my  thought's  treasury  is  closed,4 

he  cries  in  two  mournful  lines  of  a  sonnet  in  1735.  He  prepared 
at  this  time  additions  and  corrections  for  a  possible  reprint 
of  the  second  Scienza  Nuova,  and  incorporated  them  in  the 
final  manuscript  of  the  work  ;  he  thought  for  a  time  of  printing 
his  small  work  "  on  the  Equilibrium  of  the  Living  Body  " 
(De  aequilibrio  corporis  animantis)  composed  many  years 
earlier  and  now  lost  ; 5  he  still  discharged  some  of  the  duties 

1  Autob.  in  Opp.  iv.  p.  402.  2  Ibid.  3  Ibid.  p.  415. 

4  Opp.  vi.  p.  425  (Sonnet  on  the  marriage  of  Raimondo  di  Sangro, 
1735).  *  Bibl.  vich.  pp.  38-9. 


APPENDIX  I  267 

of  his  office,  such  as  the  speech  on  the  marriage  of  the  king, 
Charles  Bourbon,  in  1738.  But  from  1736  or  1737  his  son 
began  to  assist  him  in  his  professional  work,  and  in  January 
1741  he  was  definitely  appointed  to  the  chair  on  his  father's 
resignation.1  Vico  henceforth  lived  among  his  family  like 
an  old  soldier  exacta  militia,  thinking  over  his  past  battles 
and  conscious  of  having  done  his  life's  work.  His  good  son 
read  to  him  for  some  hours  every  day  out  of  the  Latin  classics 
he  had  once  loved  and  studied  so  well.  And  in  this  evening 
of  his  life  he  was  at  least  spared  the  crowning  agony  suffered 
in  his  last  years  by  a  philosopher  more  fortunate  than  himself, 
Immanuel  Kant ;  the  agony  of  continuing  and  completing 
his  system  of  philosophy,  and  wearing  himself  out  in  a  fruitless 
struggle  with  thoughts  that  eluded  his  grasp  and  words  that 
no  longer  obeyed  him.  Vico  had  said  all  he  had  to  say  ;  a 
great  historian  of  his  own  life,  he  knew  the  moment  at  which 
Providence  had  finished  its  work  in  him,  closed  the  door  of 
thought  it  had  so  freely  opened,  and  ordered  him  to  lay  down 
his  pen.2 

1  Gentile,  //  Figlio  di  G.  B.  Vico,  pp.  30-48. 

2  The  documents  and  the  scattered  notes  used  in  this  lecture  and 
quoted  from    the  contents   of  my  Bibliografia  vichiana  are   now   all 
collected  in  my  edition  of  the  Autobiografia,  carteggio  e  poesie  varie  : 
cf .  the  present  vol.  infra,  p.  308. 


APPENDIX  II 
THE  LATER  HISTORY  OF  VICO'S  THOUGHT * 

THE  history  of  the  vicissitudes  of  Vice's  reputation  must  not 
be  allowed  to  replace  or  be  confused  with  the  exposition  and 
valuation  of  his  thought,  by  losing  sight  of  the  history  of 
philosophy  properly  so  called  or  confusing  it  with  the  history 
of  culture.2  But  even  when  we  pass  to  this  second  history, 
we  must  guard  against  another  kind  of  error,  namely  the 
pretence  of  determining  by  its  means  whether  Vice's  work 
was  or  was  not  of  use  in  the  advancement  of  culture,  and 
what  degree  of  utility  we  should  grant  it.  The  inquiry  is 
meaningless,  and  the  degree  cannot  be  measured  :  for  rightly 
considered  one  disciple  may  be  worth  tens  or  hundreds,  one 
effect  produced  after  centuries  may  compensate  its  age-long 
delay,  one  point  undeservedly  forgotten  may  become  as 
notable  and  instructive  as  the  best-deserved  reputation,  and 
one  single  truth  twice  discovered  independently  may  from 
this  re-discovery  and  seeming  superfluity  receive  a  confirma- 
tion of  its  inevitable  necessity.  The  work  of  Vico — such  is 
the  usual  verdict — was  entirely  useless,  because  it  appeared 
out  of  its  due  time  and  prematurely,  and  remained  unknown 
or  was  known  only  because  it  could  convey  nothing  new. 
Such  language  is  a  blasphemy  against  history,  which  allows 
nothing  to  be  useless  and  is  always  and  throughout  the  work 
of  Providence,  whose  vast  utilities  must  not  be  measured  by 
the  pettiness  of  the  human  span. 

Was  Vico  appreciated  in  the  course  of  the   eighteenth 

1  This  appendix  briefly  recapitulates  the  chief  results  of  my  re- 
searches into  the  subject  set  forth  in  the  Bibliografia  vichiana  and  its 
two  supplements  (cf.  the  present  volume,  infra,  p.  310),  to  which 
work  I  refer  for  fuller  details  and  for  the  evidence  for  the  facts  here 
laid  down. 

*  See  above,  pp.  236,  237. 

268 


APPENDIX  II  269 

century  ?  Did  any  one  read  him,  understand  him  and  follow 
his  lead  ?  The  question  has  been  answered  with  equal 
decision  in  the  affirmative  and  the  negative.  The  affirmative 
answer  has  been  supported  by  a  diligent  collection  of  scattered 
passages  up  and  down  the  writers  of  the  century  mentioning 
his  name  and  doctrines  and  an  accumulation  of  possible  or 
apparent  traces  of  his  thoughts  visible  though  unacknow- 
ledged in  Italian  and  foreign  literature.  But  a  thinker  like 
Vico  can  only  be  said  to  be  known  when  his  fundamental 
thought  has  been  grasped  and  the  spirit  that  animated  him 
has  been  felt.  Now  the  majority  of  the  facts  alleged  as  proof 
of  the  efficacy  of  his  work  concerns  particular  doctrines 
detached  from  the  whole  and  accepted  or  contested  just  like 
those  of  any  other  scholar  and  critic  or  any  paradox-monger 
of  his  time.  This  is  true  in  the  first  place  of  his  theory  on  the 
origin  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  discussed  in  the  controversy 
between  Bernardo  Tanucci  and  Guido  Grandi  from  1728  to 
1731,  contested  in  1736  by  Damiano  Romano,  accepted  in 
France  by  Bonamy  in  1735  and  recalled  in  1750  by  Terrasson  ; 
of  the  views  on  the  history  and  primitive  government  of 
Rome,  mentioned  by  Chastellux,  adopted  and  expanded  by 
Duni,  and  used  by  Du  Bignon  who  learnt  them  from  Duni ; 
of  the  hypotheses  as  to  the  prehistoric  period  and  the  origins 
of  humanity,  employed  and  modified  by  Boulanger  in  France 
and  Mario  Pagano  in  Italy ;  and  lastly,  of  some  conceptions 
upon  poetry  and  language  which  reappear  in  Pagano, 
Cesarotti  and  some  others. 

A  more  essential  question  was  that  of  the  method  of 
studying  and  judging  political  institutions  and  laws  ;  a  question 
upon  which  Montesquieu  has  been  compared  with  Vico  and 
accused  of  freely  using  the  Scienza  Nuova  without  acknowledg- 
ing his  debt.  It  is  now  established  through  Montesquieu's 
journal  that  in  1728  Antonio  Conti  at  Venice  advised  the  future 
author  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois  to  buy  Vico's  book  at  Naples  ; 
and  Montesquieu  must  have  followed  this  advice  on  reaching 
Naples  in  the  following  year  ;  for  a  copy  of  the  1725  edition 
of  the  Scienza  Nuova  is  still  preserved  in  the  library  at  the 
chateau  of  La  Brede.  But  the  mind  of  the  French  writer 
was  too  different  from  and  inferior  to  that  of  Vico  to  draw 
vital  nourishment  from  a  work  such  as  the  Scienza  Nuova  ; 
and  the  traces  of  imitation  alleged  to  have  been  discovered  in 
the  Esprit  des  Lois  are  very  doubtful  and  in  any  case  of  minor 
importance.  It  must  be  said  on  the  other  hand  that  the 


270       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

merit  generally  attributed  to  Montesquieu  of  having  intro- 
duced the  historical  element  into  positive  laws  and  thus 
considering  legislation  in  a  truly  philosophical  manner  (as 
Hegel  said  later),  that  is,  as  a  moment  depending  upon  a 
totality  relative  to  all  the  other  determinations  which  go  to 
form  the  character  of  a  people  or  a  period  ;  this  merit,  in 
order  both  of  time  and  of  excellence,  belongs  in  reality  to 
Vico. 

Like  Montesquieu  in  the  science  of  legislation,  so  Wolf  in 
the  Homeric  question  has  been  suspected  of  tacitly  deriving 
help  from  Vico's  speculations.  But  at  the  time  when  he 
published  the  Prolegomena  ad  Homerum  in  1795  Wolf  did  not 
know  the  Scienza  Nuova ;  which  he  knew  in  name  only  in 
1801  and  in  fact  the  year  after,  when  Cesarotti  presented  him 
with  the  book.  We  must  observe  that  Vico's  judgment  as 
to  the  barbaric  nature  of  the  Homeric  epos  and  the  absence  in 
it  of  esoteric  wisdom  had  been  published  in  1765  by  the 
Gazette  litteraire  de  I' Europe  ;  and  further,  that  the  Scienza 
Nuova  was  known  and  used  by  the  Danish  philologist  and 
archaeologist  Zoega,  who  quotes  it  in  an  essay  on  Homer 
composed  in  1788  though  not  published  till  long  afterwards  ; 
and  that  Zoega  corresponded  with  Heyne,  who  afterwards 
accused  Wolf  of  having  derived  from  his  own  lectures  the 
theory  set  forth  in  the  Prolegomena.  Heyne  had  in  fact 
expressed  the  idea  of  a  gradual  genesis  of  the  Homeric  poems 
in  1790.  In  a  word  we  may  say  that  Vico's  views  had  to  some 
extent  penetrated  into  the  atmosphere  of  German  philology  : 
in  which  case  WTolf  may  have  originally  had  a  certain  indirect 
knowledge  of  them.  Even  apart  from  this  indirect  com- 
munication the  fact  remains,  and  is  recognised  by  all  students 
of  the  question,  that  the  Homeric  theory  conceived  by  Wolf 
must  really  be  called  not  Wolfian  but  Vician,  since  such  it  truly 
is  in  its  fundamental  characteristics.  Moreover,  Wolf,  as  a 
philologist  far  superior  to  Vico  but  much  less  great  as  a 
thinker,  was  not  in  a  position  to  understand  the  ideas  which 
had  led  his  predecessor  to  the  doctrine  he  held  concerning 
Homer  :  a  fact  which  is  clear  from  the  somewhat  superficial 
article  he  wrote  on  the  subject  in  1807. 

There  was  certainly  at  Naples  during  the  eighteenth 
century  a  vague  consciousness  in  many  minds  of  the  greatness 
of  Vico's  work  ;  but  in  what  precisely  this  greatness  consisted 
nobody  could  determine,  owing  to  the  lack  of  adequate 
experience  and  preparation.  Outside  Italy,  especially  in 


APPENDIX  II  271 

Germany,  where  this  preparation  existed  or  at  least  was  much 
greater,  Vice's  work  remained  generally  unknown,  partly 
through  the  discredit  into  which  Italian  books  had  fallen  since 
the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  partly  through  the 
difficulties  which  Vice's  style  presented  to  a  foreign  reader. 
When  the  Scienza  Nuova  did  fall  into  the  hands  of  men  com- 
petent to  understand  it,  a  series  of  insignificant  accidents 
interposed  to  prevent  such  an  understanding.  Hamann 
procured  the  Scienza  Nuova  from  Florence  in  1777,  at  which 
time  he  was  engaged  upon  economics  and  physiocracy,  fancy- 
ing that  it  dealt  with  these  subjects  ;  and  the  delusion  was 
not  dispelled  when  in  glancing  over  it  he  found  himself  faced 
by  a  collection  of  philological  studies  and  studies  carried  out 
with  considerable  carelessness.  Goethe  received  it  at  Naples 
in  1787  from  Filangieri,  who  warmly  recommended  it,  took 
it  back  to  Germany  and  lent  it  in  1792  to  Jacobi ;  but  it  was 
a  happy  coincidence  rather  than  a  true  knowledge  or  a  clear 
intuition  that  led  him  to  couple  Vice's  name  with  that  of 
Hamann.  Herder,  who  may  also  have  known  Vice's  work 
less  through  his  correspondence  with  Hamann  in  1777  than  by 
his  travels  in  Italy  in  1789,  speaks  of  it  in  1797  in  quite  general 
terms,  without  noticing  one  of  the  many  connexions  between 
Vice  and  himself,  especially  as  regards  the  theory  of  language 
and  poetry. 

The  only  men  in  the  eighteenth  century  who  really  to  some 
extent  penetrated  into  the  fundamental  thought  of  Vice  and 
proclaimed  though  unwillingly  his  genuine  greatness  were — 
and  this  is  another  proof  of  the  solid  mental  fibre  of  Catholi- 
cism— his  Catholic  opponents,  of  whom  there  were  plenty  : 
Romano,  Lami,  Rogadei,  and  above  all  Finetti.  They  saw 
that  in  spite  of  his  stubborn  protestations  of  religious  ortho- 
doxy Vice  held  a  conception  of  Providence  very  different  from 
that  of  Christian  theology ;  and  that  though  he  continually 
used  the  name  of  God  he  never  allowed  him  to  operate  effect- 
ively in  history  as  a  personal  God  ;  that  he  made  so  sharp  a 
distinction  between  sacred  and  profane  history  as  to  reach 
a  purely  natural  and  human  theory  of  the  origin  of  civilisation, 
by  means  of  the  state  of  nature,  and  of  the  origin  of  religion, 
by  means  of  fear,  shame  and  the  imaginative  universal ; 
while  the  traditional  Catholic  doctrine  admitted  a  certain 
communication  between  sacred  and  profane  history,  and 
recognised  in  pagan  religion  and  civilisation  the  leaven  of  some 
kind  of  vague  recollection  of  the  primitive  revealed  truth  ; 


272      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

that  though  protesting  that  he  accepted  and  reinforced  the 
authority  of  the  Bible,  he  threatened  and  shook  it  on  many 
points  ;  and  that  his  criticism  of  profane  historical  tradition, 
conducted  in  a  haughty  spirit  of  rebellion  against  the  past, 
might  open  the  road  to  the  most  dangerous  abuses,  since  it 
provoked  the  application  of  the  same  spirit  and  method  to 
sacred  history,  which  happened  in  the  case  of  Boulanger.1 
In  this  accusation  are  faithfully  indicated  all  the  points 
destined  later  to  enter  into  the  nineteenth  century's  solemn 
eulogy  of  Vico.  Thus  churchmen  began  to  be  suspicious  of 
him  ;  and  this  bore  fruit  later  in  the  restoration  period,  in 
the  anti-Vician  polemic  of  Bishop  Colangelo,  and  somewhat 
earlier  in  a  verdict  of  the  royal  censor  Lorenzo  Giustiniani, 
who  pronounced  the  Scienza  Nuova  "  a  work  marking  a  most 
unfortunate  crisis  in  European  history." 

This  tendency  was  opposed  by  the  enthusiastic  young 
students  of  social  and  political  matters  at  Naples  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  preparing  themselves  for  an  active 
part  in  the  imminent  revolution.  Among  them  Vico  came 
to  be  considered  as  an  anti-clerical  and  anti-Catholic,  and  the 
legend  arose,  mentioned  elsewhere  in  this  volume,  that  Vico 
purposely  and  deliberately  made  his  work  obscure  in  order 
to  escape  ecclesiastical  censure.  These  young  men  applied 
themselves  to  the  study  and  praise  of  the  Scienza  Nuova  ; 
they  proposed  to  reprint  it,  since  it  had  become  rare,  together 
with  the  other  works  and  unpublished  manuscripts  of  the 
author  ;  they  prepared  expositions  and  criticisms  of  Vice's 
philosophical  and  historical  system  ;  some  like  Pagano  tried 
to  work  it  up  afresh  by  adding  to  it  the  ideas  of  French  sensa- 
tionalism, others  like  Filangieri  did  not  let  their  admiration 
of  it  dispel  their  rosy  dreams  of  reform.  In  1797  the  German 
Gerning  on  coming  to  Naples  noted  the  zeal  with  which  Vico 
was  studied,  and  projected  a  translation  or  at  least  a  summary 
of  the  Scienza  Nuova  in  German.  When  the  fall  of  the 
Neapolitan  Republic  in  1799  drove  these  young  men,  or 
rather  those  of  them  who  escaped  the  massacres  and  the 
gallows  of  the  Bourbon  reaction,  into  exile  in  Northern  Italy 
and  especially  in  Lombardy,  the  cult  of  Vico  was  for  the 
first  time  ardently  propagated.  Vincenzo  Cuoco,  Francesco 
Lomonaco,  Francesco  Salfi  and  other  southern  patriots  passed 
the  knowledge  of  the  Scienza  Nuova  to  Monti,  who  mentioned 

1  Labanca  has  devoted  a  highly  instructive  volume  to  the  Catholic 
criticisms  of  Vico  :  see  the  present  volume,  infra,  p.  309. 


APPENDIX  II  273 

it  in  his  inaugural  lecture  at  Pavia  in  1803,  to  Ugo  Foscolo, 
who  absorbed  many  of  its  ideas  into  his  poem  the  Sepolcri 
and  his  critical  essays  :  to  Alessandro  Manzoni,  who  was 
later  to  institute  in  his  Discorso  sulla  storia  longobarda  a  famous 
comparison  between  Vico  and  Muratori  :  and  to  others  of  less 
importance.  Cuoco  introduced  Vice's  work  to  Degeirando, 
then  at  work  on  his  Histoire  comparee  des  systemes  philo- 
sophiques  ;  another  exile,  De  Angelis,  put  the  Scienza  Nuova 
into  the  hands  of  Jules  Michelet ;  Salfi  mentioned  Vico  in 
articles  in  the  Revue  Encyclopedique  and  in  books  and  minor 
works  in  French.  It  was  also  through  the  suggestion  of  these 
Neapolitans  that  the  Scienza  Nuova  was  reprinted  at  Milan 
in  1801  ;  and  other  editions  and  collections  of  Vice's  smaller 
works  were  not  long  in  appearing.  Thus  in  the  first  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  century  Vice's  reputation,  which  had  till  then 
been  merely  local  to  Naples,  spread  over  the  whole  of  Italy. 

But,  suitably  to  their  personal  disposition  and  to  the  spirit 
of  the  times,  the  first  and  chief  debt  which  the  patriotic 
students  of  Vico  owed  to  his  thought  was  political  in  character 
or  rather  belonging  to  political  philosophy ;  and  consisted  in 
a  criticism  of  that  Jacobinism  and  philo-Gallicism  of  which 
they  had  had  such  unhappy  experience  in  the  events  of  I799-1 
Vice's  thought  led  them  to  more  concrete  concepts  ;  and  this 
is  particularly  visible  in  Vincenzo  Cuoco's  admirable  Saggio 
storico  sulla  rivoluzione  napoletana  (1800).  Similarly  Ballanche 
some  decades  later  in  his  Essais  de  palingenesie  sociale  (1827) 
wrote  that  if  Vico  had  been  known  in  France  in  the  eighteenth 
century  he  would  have  exercised  a  beneficial  influence  on 
the  subsequent  social  revolutions.  Another  particular  aspect 
of  Vice's  work,  the  reform  undertaken  by  him  of  historical 
methodology  and  social  science  as  an  aid  to  history,  was 
observed  and  emphasised  by  the  archaeologist  Cataldo 
lannelli  in  his  work  Sulla  natura  e  necessita  della  scienza  delle 
cose  e  delle  storie  umane  (1818).  Foscolo  and  those  who  drew 
their  inspiration  from  him  chiefly  introduced  into  literary 
criticism  and  history  something  of  Vico's  conceptions  on  the 
historical  interpretation  of  poetry. 

In  Germany  on  the  other  hand  Jacobi,  who  had  read  the 
De  antiquissima,  immediately  placed  himself  in  the  centre 
of  the  Vician  philosophy  by  discovering  and  pointing  out  in 
1811,  in  his  work  Uber  den  gottlichen  Dingen  und  ihrer  Offen- 
barung,  the  close  connexion  between  the  principle  of  the  con- 
1  See  above,  pp.  247-9. 

T 


274      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

vertibility  of  the  true  and  the  created  and  the  Kantian  theory 
that  one  can  perfectly  conceive  and  understand  only  what 
one  is  able  to  construct :  a  single  step  from  which  position 
leads,  as  he  observes,  to  the  system  of  identity.  The  same 
fact  was  recognised  by  Baader,  who  found  in  this  system  the 
confirmation  and  foundation  of  the  principle  enunciated  by 
Vico.  But  the  translation  of  the  Scienza  Nuova  made  by 
Weber  in  1822  seems  to  have  been  unsuccessful ;  and  it  does 
not  appear  that  Vico  was  known  to  Hegel,  with  whom  he  has 
so  many  substantial  and  formal  affinities,  especially  in  the 
Phenomenology  ;  and  whose  mania  for  triads  might  be  blamed 
just  as  the  Catholic  Finetti  had  blamed  Vico  for  always 
standing  "  upon  rule  of  three."  The  resemblances  again  of 
Vice's  theories  to  the  new  German  philological  doctrines  of 
Niebuhr,  Miiller,  Bockh  and  many  others  were  not  at  all 
willingly  admitted.  The  attitude  of  Niebuhr  is  characteristic. 
Whether  he  knew  Vice's  work  or  not  when  he  published  the 
first  edition  of  his  Romische  Geschichte,  he  certainly  knew  it 
later  through  Savigny  and  through  the  article  entitled  Vico 
und  Niebuhr  published  in  1816  by  the  Swiss  Orelli ;  and  yet 
he  continued  to  ignore  him,  through  some  kind  of  contempt  or 
depreciation ;  an  attitude  hardly  praiseworthy  but  imitated 
by  Mommsen. 

In  France,  the  spread  of  knowledge  concerning  Vice's 
thought  was  due  to  Michelet,  who  translated  his  works  and 
in  his  last  years  described  Italy  as  "  the  second  mother  and 
nurse  who  in  my  youth  suckled  me  upon  Virgil,  and  in  my 
maturity  nourished  me  with  Vico  ;  potent  cordials  that  have 
many  times  renewed  my  heart."  Michelet  was  the  first  or 
one  of  the  first  to  proclaim,  in  his  introduction,  that  Vico  was 
not  understood  in  the  eighteenth  century  because  he  wrote 
for  the  nineteenth.  Michelet  was  joined  by  Ballanche,  of 
whom  we  spoke  above,  and  also  by  Jouffroy,  Lerminier, 
Chateaubriand,  and  Cousin,  some  of  whom  grasped  the 
connexion  between  Vico  and  the  German  philosophy  that 
Cousin  was  at  this  time  propagating  in  France  ;  and  later 
by  Laurent,  Vacherot,  De  Ferron,  Franck,  Cournot  and  many 
others.  Vico  was  read  and  admired  by  Comte,  who  mentioned 
him  in  a  letter  to  John  Stuart  Mill  in  1844,  and  lastly  L6on 
Gambetta  conceived  in  his  youth  a  general  history  of  commerce 
upon  the  scheme  of  the  Vician  "  reflux."  The  popularity  of 
Vice's  name  in  France  at  this  period  was  so  great  that  it  is 
several  times  mentioned  in  joke  in  passages  of  Balzac's  novels 


APPENDIX  II  273 

and  in  Flaubert's  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet.  But  thought  of  the 
quality  of  Vico's  could  never  have  a  very  deep  or  lasting 
influence  in  the  persistently  intellectualistic  and  spiritualistic 
atmosphere  of  France.  Perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  results 
it  produced  were  the  theories  of  Fustel  de  Coulanges  on  the 
ancient  city  and  the  origin  of  feudalism. 

But,  to  return  to  Italy,  if  the  aspirations  towards  a  national 
uprising,  which  tended  to  vindicate  and  glorify  all  the  orna- 
ments Italy  could  boast,  raised  Vico's  name  almost  to  a  level 
with  that  of  Dante,  the  simultaneous  renaissance  of  philosophy, 
which  was  shaking  off  the  sensationalism  and  materialism 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  bound  to  attach  itself  to  the 
last  great  idealistic  philosopher,  to  use  his  thoughts  and  to 
shelter  itself  behind  his  authority.  Vico's  complete  works 
were  now  collected  and  editions  of  the  single  treatises  multi- 
plied. And  since  in  the  national  uprising  two  currents  could 
be  distinguished,  partly  successive  and  partly  fused,  the  neo- 
Guelphian  and  the  radical,  and  since  this  distinction  was 
represented  in  the  philosophical  awakening  by  that  between 
Catholic  idealism  and  rationalistic  idealism,  the  schools  of 
Rosmini  and  Gioberti  on  the  one  hand  and  Bruno  and  Hegel 
on  the  other  ;  Vico,  at  once  a  Catholic  and  a  free  philosopher, 
lent  himself  admirably,  as  is  easy  to  understand,  to  the  con- 
trary sympathies  and  interpretations  of  the  two  schools. 
Thus  originated  two  different  pictures  of  him,  both  historically 
justified,  though  the  one  painted  him  as  he  would  have 
wished  to  be,  the  other  as  he  was.  The  Vico  of  the  liberal 
Catholics  was  above  all  the  Vico  of  the  metaphysical  points, 
the  Platonist,  the  mystic  of  the  unknowable  God,  the  tradition- 
alist of  the  prologues  to  the  Diritto  universale,  and  hence  the 
strictly  Italian  philosopher  as  opposed  to  those  of  the  rest  of 
Europe,  sons  of  the  Reformation  :  whereas  the  Vico  of  the 
rationalists,  the  bold  and  heretical  author  of  the  Scienza 
Nuova,  is  a  European  philosopher  to  be  set  side  by  side  with 
Descartes  and  Spinoza,  Kant  and  Hegel.  The  former  picture 
may  be  seen  in  the  works  of  Rosmini,  Gioberti,  Tommaseo  and 
many  others,  among  which  we  must  not  forget  those  of  a 
Neapolitan  writer  of  lofty  spirit,  Enrico  Cenni,  perhaps  the 
best  of  all,  who  draws  a  loving  picture  of  the  Vico  of  the 
Catholics.  The  latter  portrait  is  found  in  the  philosophers 
and  critics  who  from  1840  onwards  acquired  their  education 
in  the  school  of  German  idealism ;  especially  Bertrando 
Spaventa  and  Francesco  de  Sanctis,  who  were  the  first  to  see 


276       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

clearly  Vice's  relations  to  earlier  and  later  European  thought 
and  to  substitute  for  mere  observations  and  vague  impressions 
on  the  subject  a  scientific  interpretation  and  a  determinate 
judgment.  That  the  second  school  of  interpreters  and 
critics  were  in  the  right,  and  that  the  liberal  or  idealistic 
Catholics  had  taken  up  an  untenable  position  and  reproduced 
in  their  irresolution  and  incoherence  the  irresolution  and 
incoherence  of  Vico  himself,  was  proved  by  the  fact,  among 
others,  that  less  liberal  but  more  consistent  Catholics  like 
the  Spaniard  Jaime  Balmes  show  an  inflexible  distrust  and 
hostility  towards  the  author  of  the  Scienza  Nuova. 

The  study  of  history  in  Italy  during  this  period  was  less 
deeply  modified  by  Vico's  influence  ;  chiefly  perhaps  because 
the  impulse  of  the  national  uprising  led  to  the  neglect  of 
primitive  and  Roman  history  and  the  devotion  of  all  its 
best  energies  to  research  into  the  origin  and  vicissitudes  of 
the  Italian  republics,  a  subject  Vico  had  entirely  ignored. 
On  the  other  hand,  jurisprudence  especially  in  the  south  was 
dominated  by  his  thought ;  and  though  it  produced  in  this 
field  no  great  scientific  results,  it  gave  to  the  jurists  a  loftiness 
and  breadth  of  judgment  and  a  concreteness  of  view  which 
were  long  remembered  and  regretted. 

After  1870,  with  the  decay  of  philosophy  in  Italy  and 
elsewhere,  the  study  of  Vico  also  decayed  :  and  for  more  than 
forty  years  there  was  no  demand  for  a  reprint  of  his  works. 
The  monograph  by  Cantoni  in  the  year  1867,  in  spite  of  some 
valuable  passages,  already  shows  unmistakable  signs  of  the 
decadence,  founded  as  it  is  upon  the  idea  that  Vico's  value 
is  greater  according  as  he  is  less  of  a  metaphysician  and  more 
of  a  psychologist  and  historian  :  a  position  due  not  so  much 
to  the  intrinsic  weakness  ascribed  to  him  by  Cantoni  in  philo- 
sophical matters  as  to  the  implicit  conviction  on  the  critic's 
part  that  metaphysic  in  general  is  a  valueless  thing,  useful 
only  for  rousing  enthusiasm  in  the  addled  heads  of  southern 
Italians.  The  great  idealist  of  the  New  Science  was  subjected, 
as  a  final  insult,  to  the  praises  of  the  positivists,  who  in  their 
astonishing  ignorance  almost  amounting  to  innocence  did 
not — and  still  do  not — hesitate  to  allege  as  a  confirmation  of 
their  formal  profession  of  faith  the  words  "  verum  ipsum 
factum,"  which  according  to  them  means  that  the  truth  is 
the  fact  which  we  see  and  touch.  Writings  making  any 
serious  contribution  to  the  knowledge  of  any  particular  point 
on  Vico's  doctrines  were  rare.  Interest  in  Vico  only  reawoke 


APPENDIX  II  277 

within  the  last  decade  with  the  general  reawakening  of  philo- 
sophical studies. 

Of  the  two  best  comprehensive  works  on  Vico  published 
towards  the  end  of  last  century  one  is  due  to  the  German 
Catholic  Karl  Werner  (1881)  who  expounds  his  philosophical 
and  historical  doctrines  with  great  care,  judging  them  from 
the  point  of  view  of  speculative  theism,  a  theory  evolved  under 
the  influence  of  Baader  and  the  second  philosophy  of  Schelling, 
and  tending  much  more  to  the  comprehension  of  Vico  than 
the  psychology  of  Cantoni.  The  other  is  the  work  of  an 
Englishman,  Robert  Flint  (1884),  who  wrote  for  the  collection 
of  Philosophical  Classics  a  brief  monograph  upon  the  subject, 
accurate  in  detail,  and  if  not  profound  at  least  guided  by  clear 
and  sound  sense.  Recently  Sorel  in  France  has  shown  the 
fruitfulness  of  certain  views  of  Vico's,  especially  that  of  the 
reflux,  by  applying  them  to  the  history  of  primitive  Chris- 
tianity and  the  theory  of  the  modern  proletarian  movement, 
while  in  Germany  Biese  and  Mauthner  have  brought  his  con- 
ceptions of  metaphor  and  language  once  more  into  favour. 

But  in  spite  of  all  this  Vico  has  never  had  justice  done 
him  in  works  devoted  to  the  history  of  modern  philosophy. 
These,  in  the  case  both  of  Hoffding's  book  and  of  the  greatly 
superior  work  of  Windelband,  and  in  fact  of  all  others,  either 
pass  over  the  Italian  philosopher  in  complete  silence  or  else 
merely  mention  him  as  an  experimenter,  later  than  Bossuet 
and  earlier  than  Herder,  in  the  dubious  science  of  the  "  philo- 
sophy of  history."  This  lack  of  attention  arises  partly  from 
an  insufficient  knowledge  of  Vico's  real  nature ;  his  fertile 
activities  in  the  theory  of  knowledge,  in  ethics,  in  aesthetic, 
in  law  and  in  religion  are  all  hidden  behind  that  one  label 
"  philosopher  of  history."  Partly  however  it  is  due  to  the 
reaction  of  the  history  of  politics  and  culture  on  the  history 
of  philosophy  ;  which  produces  the  effect  that  thinkers  whose 
social  influence  came  to  an  end  with  the  fall  of  the  peoples  or 
states  to  which  they  belonged,  or  who  for  some  reason  or  other 
had  no  considerable  influence  on  European  civilisation,  are 
sacrificed  to  others  much  less  important  from  a  philosophical 
point  of  view  but  more  influential  or  better  known  as  exponents 
of  social  life  and  representatives  of  cultural  tendencies ;  so 
that  where  it  would  be  thought  impossible  to  ignore,  for 
example,  Paley  or  d'Holbach  or  Mendelssohn,  it  seems  natural 
to  pass  over  Giambattista  Vico,  though  in  such  company  he 
is  a  giant  among  pigmies.  The  historical  injustice  of  this 


978      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

course  has  been  already  shown  theoretically  by  the  distinction 
we  have  emphasised  between  the  history  of  philosophy  and  the 
history  of  culture  ;  and  in  Vice's  special  case  by  our  whole 
work,  which  clearly  shows  the  lacuna  left  by  the  omission 
of  Vico  in  the  general  history  of  European  thought  at  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century. 


APPENDIX   III 
THE  SOURCES  OF  VICO'S  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE1 

MY  statement,  that  the  criterion  of  knowledge  contained  in 
Vice's  formula  of  the  conversion  of  the  true  with  the  created 
is  an  original  and  modern  principle,  has  been  contradicted 
by  certain  Catholic  editors ;  who  state  that  this  doctrine, 
however  true,  is  not  original  to  Vico,  and  is  indeed  far  from 
modern,  being  a  purely  Scholastic  doctrine.  If  I  thought 
otherwise,  this  was  only  due  to  my  insufficient  knowledge  of 
Scholasticism. 

I  might  indeed  ask  at  the  outset  how  such  complete  ignor- 
ance of  scholasticism  were  possible  :  an  ignorance  not  of  its 
manifold  varieties  and  the  tangled  forest  of  its  distinctions — 
that  would  be  comprehensible  :  but  of  no  less  a  matter  than 
the  fundamental  criterion  of  its  theory  of  knowledge,  the 
starting-point  of  modern  thought  and  as  such,  it  would  seem, 
inevitably  familiar  to  every  student  of  the  elements  of  philo- 
sophy. But  since  it  is  always  useful  to  suspect  oneself  of 
ignorance,  or  even  to  believe  oneself  more  ignorant  than  one 
really  is,  I  will  make  so  far  as  concerns  myself  a  voluntary 
display  of  humility.  I  find  it  less  easy,  I  confess,  to  extend  the 
accusation  of  ignorance  to  all  who,  like  myself,  have  failed 
to  run  Vice's  criterion  to  earth  in  the  scholastic  lumber- 
room  :  Jacobi  for  instance,  who  on  reading  it  as  expressed  in 
the  De  antiquissima,  sees  in  it  the  first  manifestation  of 
Kantianism  and  absolute  idealism  :  2  or  the  Catholic  theologian 
Baader,  who  finds  its  later  development  in  Schelling's  philo- 

1  A  lecture  delivered  before  the  Accademia  pontaniana  on  March  10, 
1912,  and  here  reprinted  from  the  Atti  of  that  society,  vol.  xlii. 

1  Von  den  gottlichen  Dingen  und  ihrer  Offenbarung  (1811),  W.W. 
iii-  351-354- 

279 


a8o      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

sophy  of  identity  : 1  or  the  learned  and  subtle  Spanish  Thomist, 
Jaime  Balmes,  who  treats  it  as  a  unique  idea  and  attacks  it 
from  the  scholastic  point  of  view  :  2  or  the  equally  learned 
Catholic  Bertini,  who  accepts  and  develops  Jacobi's  observa- 
tion : 3  or  the  eminent  historian  of  philosophy  Wilhelm  Windel- 
band,  who,  while  unacquainted  with  Vice's  doctrines,  on 
coming  across  indications  of  a  similar  thought  in  Sanchez's 
Quod  nihil  scitur  was  greatly  struck  by  it  and  endorsed  its 
value  by  the  assertion  that  it  was  to  bear  fruit  at  a  later  date 
and  in  the  hands  of  a  greater  philosopher,  Immanuel  Kant :  * 
or  again  the  specialist  in  the  history  of  scholasticism,  Karl 
Werner,  the  author  of  a  careful  monograph  on  Vico,5  who 
nowhere  notices  the  alleged  scholastic  character  of  Vico's 
theory  of  knowledge.  Scholasticism  must  indeed  be  a  diffi- 
cult and  mysterious  doctrine,  if  it  is  inaccessible  to  all 
these  students,  qualified  and  bound  though  they  are  to  under- 
stand it. 

But  we  cannot  pause  on  the  threshold  to  speculate:  we 
must  plunge  straight  into  the  argument.  In  what  part  of 
scholasticism  can  we  find  Vico's  criterion  converting  knowledge 
with  creation  ? 

The  Thomistic  saying,  "  truth  and  reality  are  convertible," 
ens  et  verum  convertuntur ,  has  been  quoted  :  6  but  quotations 
of  this  kind  are  perhaps  more  calculated  to  confuse  by  words 
than  to  convince  by  facts.  The  same  value  attaches  to  the 
statement  that  Vico  himself  confessed  the  scholastic  origin 
of  his  principle,  since  the  very  first  chapter  of  the  De  anti- 
quissima  begins  with  the  words  "  in  Latin,  the  truth  and  the 
fact  reciprocate,  or,  as  the  scholastic  mob  says,  convert," 
"  Latinis  verum  etfactum  reciprocantur,  seu,  ut  scholarum  vulgus 
loquitur,  convertuntur."  Here  it  is  perfectly  clear  to  any  one 
on  a  moment's  thought  that  Vico,  Latinist  as  he  was,  meant 

1  Vorlesungen  iiber  religiose  Philosophic,  W.W.  i.  195,  and  Vorles. 
iiber  spekul.  Dogmatik,  ib.  ix.  106  (passages  quoted  by  K.  Werner, 
G.  B.  Bico,  p.  324). 

*  La  Filosofia  fondamentale,  translated  from  the  Spanish,  Naples, 
1851,  bk.  i.  ch.  30-31. 

8  Storia  critica  delle  prove  metafisiche  di  una  realita  sovrasensibile 
(Atti  dell'  Accademia  di  Torino,  i.  1866),  pp.  640-41. 

*  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophic  (1878),  5th  edition,  i.  23. 

8  G.B.  Vico  als  Philosoph  und  gelehrter  Forscher  (Wien,  1881).  It  is 
well  known  that  Werner  has  written  upon  St.  Thomas,  Duns  Scotus, 
late  Scholasticism,  Suarez,  Augustinianism,  nominalism,  etc. 

'  Th.  Neal  (A.  Cecconi),  Vico  e  I'immanenza,  in  the  Roman  Cultura 
contemporaries, ,  iii.  (1911)  parts  7-8,  pp.  1-24, 


APPENDIX  III  281 

simply  to  substitute  the  Ciceronian  "  reciprocari  "  for  the 
barbarous  "  converti." 

St.  Thomas  explained  the  meaning  of  his  formula  quite 
clearly,  especially  in  the  Summa  Theologica,  Part  I.  question 
xvi.  art.  3.  Here  he  asks  whether  the  truth  and  the  reality 
are  convertible,  utrum  verum  et  ens  convertantur ;  to  which 
he  replies  as  follows  :  "  that  as  the  good  is  of  the  nature  of  the 
desirable,  so  the  truth  has  the  nature  of  knowledge.  But  in 
so  far  as  a  thing  has  existence  in  itself,  thus  far  it  is  knowable. 
And  for  this  reason  it  is  said  in  De  anima,  Bk.  III.  text.  37 
(431  b  21)  that  "  the  soul  is  in  a  sense  all  things  "  according 
to  sense  and  intellect.  And  hence  as  the  good  is  con- 
vertible with  the  existent,  so  is  the  true.  But  yet  as  the 
good  adds  to  existence  the  nature  of  the  desirable,  so 
also  the  truth  adds  a  reference  to  the  intellect."  (Quod 
sicut  bonum  habet  rationem  appetibilis,  ita  verum  habet 
ordinem  cognitionis.  Unumquodque  autem  in  quantum  habet 
de  esse,  in  tantum  est  cognoscibile.  Et  propter  hoc  dicitur  in 
3  de  Anima,  text.  37,  quod  '  anima  est  quodammodo  omnia ' 
secundum  sensum  et  intellectum.  Et  ideo  sicut  bonum  con- 
vertitur  cum  ente,  ita  et  verum.  Sed  tamen  sicut  bonum  addit 
rationem  appetibilis  supra  ens,  ita  et  verum  comparationem  ad 
intellectum.}  Nothing  then  can  be  known  except  what  exists, 
and  nothing  can  exist  but  what  is  good  :  existence,  truth 
and  goodness  are  all  convertible.  Thus,  too,  things  are 
called  good  in  so  far  as  they  correspond  to  the  idea  in 
their  Creator's  mind.  "  Each  single  thing  partakes  of  the 
truth  of  its  own  nature  in  so  far  as  it  imitates  the 
knowledge  of  God,  like  an  artefact  in  so  far  as  it  agrees 
with  the  art  "  :  "  the  knowledge  of  God  is  the  cause  of 
things  "  :  "  the  knowledge  of  God  is  the  measure  of  things." 
(Unumquodque  in  tantum  habet  de  veritate  suae  natura, 
in  quantum  imitatur  Dei  scientiam  sicut  artificiatum  in  quantum 
concordat  arti  I.  xiv.  12.  Scientia  Dei  est  causa  rerum  I. 
xiv.  12.  Scientia  Dei  est  mensura  rerum  I.  xiv.  12.)  But  truth 
and  goodness,  the  objects  of  intellect  and  will  respectively, 
if  on  the  one  hand  they  are  "  convertible  in  reality,"  con- 
vertentur  secundum  rem,  on  the  other  they  are  "  distinguishable 
in  thought,"  diversificantur  secundum  rationem  (I.  lix.  2). 
What  have  these  thoughts  in  common  with  Vice's  idea  that 
the  condition  of  knowing  a  truth  is  to  create  it  ?  In  fact, 
what  is  here  stated  is  that  the  condition  of  making  a  thing 
is  to  know  it,  or  as  St.  Thomas  says  in  the  same  place  (I.  xiv.  8) 


282       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

in  St.  Augustine's  words  (De  Trinitate  xv.  13)  "  Universas 
creaturas  et  spirituales  et  corporales  non  quia  sunt  ideo  novit 
Dens,  sed  ideo  sunt  quia  novit."  (God  does  not  know  all  His 
creatures  corporeal  and  spiritual  because  they  exist :  but 
they  exist  because  He  knows  them.) 

Vico  makes  no  kind  of  mention  of  the  formula  ens  et  verunt 
convertuntur ,  though  he  knows  and  quotes — a  fact  which  has 
escaped  my  critics — the  analogous  phrase  "  the  true  and  the 
good  are  convertible,"  verum  et  bonum  convertuntur :  *•  a 
formula  which  he  diverts  to  his  own  purposes,  or  rather  unites 
it  with  his  own.  "  In  the  first  place,"  he  writes,  "  I  establish 
a  truth  which  is  convertible  with  the  created,  and  in  this 
sense  I  understand  the  good  of  the  schools,  convertible  with 
existence  :  and  hence  I  infer  that  the  one  and  only  truth  is 
in  God,  since  in  Him  is  contained  all  Creation."  2  This  union 
is  reached  quite  openly  by  identifying  verum  with  factum, 
then  factum  with  ens,  and  finally  the  verum-factum-ens  with 
the  bonum  :  by  substituting  the  doctrine  of  Vico  for  that  of 
the  schools.  By  such  a  method  of  interpretation  one  could 
reduce  all  doctrines  to  a  single  one,  a  perennis  philosophia. 
I  do  not  say  that  it  would  be  a  method  entirely  devoid  of 
truth  ;  but  it  is  certainly  not  a  historical  method. 

That  Vico's  criterion  is  not  only  different  from  but  in- 
consistent with  Thomism  was  shown,  as  I  have  already  said, 
by  Balmes ;  who  pronounced  it  "  specious  but  devoid  of 
solid  foundation."  He  uses  St.  Thomas's  statements  to 
controvert  Vico's  theological  doctrine  that  God  understands 
because  He  creates,  opposing  to  it  the  Scholastic  view  that  He 
creates  because  He  understands.  He  denies  that  the  Word 
was  conceived  by  the  mere  knowledge  of  what  is  contained 
in  the  divine  omnipotence,  for  it  is  conceived  not  simply  by 
creatures  but  also  and  chiefly  by  the  cognition  of  the  divine 
essence  ("  for  the  Father  by  understanding  himself  and  the 
Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost  and  all  other  things  embraced  by 
His  knowledge  conceives  the  Word,  so  that  thus  the  whole 
Trinity  is  implied  in  the  Word,  and  also  every  creature  "  : 
Pater  enim  intellegendo  se  et  Filium  et  Spiritum  sanctum  et 
omnia  alia  quae  ejus  scientia  continentur  concipit  Verbum,  ut 
sic  tola  Trinitas  Verbo  dicatur,  et  etiam  omnis  creatura]  ;  he 
objects  that,  granting  this  criterion,  God  could  never  know 
himself,  because  He  is  not  His  own  cause.  He  denies  that 

1  Cf.  Summa  Theol.  i.  q.  v.  a.  i  :  q.  xxi.  a.  1-2. 

*  Prima  risposta  al  Giornale  dei  letter ati  (Opere,  ed.  Ferrari,  ii.  117). 


APPENDIX  III  283 

intelligence  is  only  possible  through  causality,  inasmuch  as  it 
is  also  possible  through  identity.  He  accuses  Vice's  criterion 
of  involving  scepticism  :  in  a  word  he  maintains  that  the 
facts  of  knowledge  are  known  by  reason,  even  if  they  are  not 
the  products  of  reason.1  I  am  not  concerned  to  ask  whether 
Balmes  is  right,  or  whether  Vice's  criterion  can  be  reconciled 
with  Christian  theology.  I  am  concerned  merely  with  estab- 
lishing, not  only  by  quotation  from  St.  Thomas  but  also  by 
the  help  of  the  judgment  of  an  authoritative  interpreter  of 
his  system  that  this  doctrine  is  not  Thomistic. 

Even  granting  that  the  criterion  in  question  is  irreconcilable 
with  Thomism  but  not  with  an  improved  Christian  theology, 
it  is  certainly  irreconcilable  with  both  in  the  form  it  adopts 
in  what  I  have  called  "  Vice's  second  theory  of  knowledge," 
in  the  Scienza  Nuova,  which  Balmes  either  did  not  know  or 
omitted  to  mention,  and  is  passed  over  by  my  critics  with  a 
light-heartedness  that  is  not  particularly  enviable.  One  of 
them  asserts  that  "  the  alleged  distinction  "  (the  distinction 
that  is  drawn  by  myself)  "  between  Vice's  first  and  second 
theories  of  knowledge  does  not  in  point  of  fact  exist,  and 
produces  no  effects  of  any  kind."  What  ?  Has  it  no  effects, 
when  those  historical  studies  and  sciences  of  mind,  which  in 
the  De  antiquissima  occupied  the  lowest  position  among 
mere  probabilities  became  in  the  Scienza  Nuova  the  truest 
of  all — true  even  in  a  higher  degree  than  mathematics  itself 
as  dealing  with  the  human  world  which  "  is  man's  creation  ?  " 
when  their  form  is  found  "  in  the  modifications  of  the  actual 
human  mind  itself  ?  "  when  they  have  "  a  reality  as  much 
greater,  as  the  reality  of  the  laws  of  human  affairs  is  greater 
than  that  of  points,  lines,  areas  and  figures  ?  "  a  Is  there  no 
distinction,  when  we  pass  from  the  scepticism  of  the  De 
antiquissima  to  the  rationalism  of  the  statement  that  these 
"  proofs  are  of  a  divine  nature,"  and  must  produce  "  a  divine 
pleasure,  since  in  God  to  know  and  to  create  are  one  and  the 
same  "  ?  8 

It  is  true  that  upon  this  point  my  attention  has  been 
recalled  to  a  well-known  passage  of  Galileo  (Dialogo  dei 
massimi  sistemi),  an  especial  favourite  of  our  own  Spaventa,4 

1  Balmes,  loc.  cit. 

*  Scienza  Nuova,  ed.  Nicolini,  i.  187-8. 

3  Ibid.  p.  1 88. 

4  Scritti    filosofici,    ed.     Gentile,     pp.    383-7,    and     Esperiema    e 
metafisica,  p.  218  sqq. 


284      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

where  we  find  the  thought  that  the  human  intellect  differs 
from  the  divine  extensive  but  not  intensive,  and  that  if  the 
divine  intellect  knows  infinitely  more  about  mathematical 
propositions  because  it  knows  them  all,  yet  "  of  these  few 
facts  known  by  the  human  intellect,  its  knowledge  is  equal 
to  that  of  the  divine  in  objective  certainty,  since  it  attains 
comprehension  of  the  necessity  than  which  no  greater  certainty, 
it  seems,  can  exist."  But  in  any  case  Galileo  was  not  a 
Schoolman,  and  moreover  this  pronouncement  of  his  seemed 
so  dangerous  to  the  Christian  theory  of  ideas,  that  he  himself 
was  obliged  to  alter  it  by  admitting  that  while  "  so  far  as  the 
truth  of  which  mathematical  proof  gives  no  knowledge  is 
concerned,  this  is  identical  with  that  which  the  divine  wisdom 
knows,"  yet  "  the  manner,  in  which  God  knows  the  infinitely 
numerous  propositions  of  which  we  know  a  few,  is  immensely 
superior  to  our  own,  which  proceeds  discursively  from  one 
conclusion  to  another,  while  His  is  simple  intuition."  It  is 
important  too  not  to  forget  that  this  very  statement  figures 
among  the  heads  of  the  accusation  in  Galileo's  trial.1 

If  the  formula  of  the  conversion  of  the  true  with  the  created 
is  not  found  in  Thomism,  it  may  perhaps  be  found,  at  least  in 
its  original,  sceptical  or  mystical,  intention,  in  other  tendencies 
of  scholasticism  or  mediaeval  philosophy  generally.  With 
Thomism  Vico  seems  to  have  had  neither  acquaintance  nor 
sympathy  :  but  from  his  autobiography  it  is  plain  that  he 
studied  nominalism  and  the  summaries  of  Petrus  Hispanus 
and  Paulus  Venetus,  though  with  little  profit,2  and  later  also, 
much  more  profitably,  the  Scotist  philosophy ;  which  he 
considered  the  most  Platonic  of  the  Scholastic  systems.3 
Traces  of  this  appear  in  several  views  expressed  in  the  De 
antiquissima,  especially  in  those  dealing  with  universals  and 
ideas.  In  this  direction,  the  direction  that  is  to  say  of  the 
Scotist  system  and  the  closely  allied  system  of  Occamism,  I 
have  attempted  various  researches,  without  attaining  any 
remarkable  results  :  further,  I  have  applied  for  assistance  to 
various  specialists  in  Scholasticism,  but  in  vain ;  they  would 

1  See  Gentile's  note,  loc.  cit. 

*  L'Autobiografia,  il  carteggio  e  le  poesie  vane,  ed.  Croce,  pp.  4-5. 
Mauthner's  assertion  (Beitrdge  zu  einer  Kritik  der  Sprache,  Berlin,  1901, 
ii.  497-8)  that  Vico  was  a  nominalist  and  that  the  great  discoveries 
of  the  Scienza  Nuova  were  due  to  his  nominalism,  is  quite  arbitrary 
and  not  founded  correctly  on  his  autobiography. 

3  Autobiography,  ed.  cit.  pp.  5-6.  Pietro  Giannone  was  also  studying 
Scotism  about  1690  (Vita  scritta  da  lui  medesimo,  ed.  Nicolini,  pp.  6-7). 


APPENDIX  III  285 

do  nothing  but  express  their  own  superficial  impressions  or 
lose  themselves  in  idle  disputation.  In  general  it  seems 
possible  to  say  that  Duns  Scotus's  theory  of  knowledge  presents 
points  of  affinity  to  that  of  Vico  :  for  example,  in  the  polemic 
against  the  Thomistic  doctrine  of  the  adaequatio  intellectus  et 
rei,  which  he  refutes  by  applying  it  to  the  divine  knowledge, 
since  God  knows  objects  as  willed  by  Him,  and  they  exist 
because  He  wills  their  existence  without  His  being  necessitated 
by  them.1  For  Occam  again  the  thought  of  objects  has  no 
reality  and  objectivity  (or  subjectivity  according  to  the  usage 
of  Scholastic  terminology,  which  is  the  reverse  of  modern) 
in  God,  and  is  nothing  else  than  the  objects  themselves,  known 
by  God  according  to  the  possibility  of  creating  them,  in  virtue 
of  which  they  are  thinkable  to  the  divine  mind.2  But  the 
question  for  Vico  is  not  merely  the  priority  of  creation  to 
knowledge  or  knowledge  to  creation,  but  the  convertibility 
or  identity  of  knowledge  and  creation. 

In  certain  recently  published  philosophical  observations 
by  Paolo  Sarpi,3  a  nominalist  of  Occam's  school,4  the  following 
statements  are  to  be  found.  They  are  the  more  notable 
because  standing  as  they  do  without  any  results  in  Sarpi's 
thought  and  being  undeveloped  in  subsequent  philosophy, 
they  seem  to  be  not  his  own  invention  but  a  mere  repetition 
of  scholastic  dicta.  "  We  have  certain  knowledge  both  of 
the  existence  and  of  the  cause  of  those  things  which  we  under- 
stand fully  how  to  create  :  of  those  which  we  know  by  experi- 
ence, we  know  the  existence,  but  not  the  cause.  We  can 
however  guess  at  it,  and  look  simply  for  a  possible  cause  : 
but  out  of  many  found  to  be  possible  we  cannot  be  certain 
which  is  the  true  one.  This  fact  may  be  seen  in  descriptions 
of  astronomical  theories,  and  would  also  be  true  in  the  case  of 
a  man  who  saw  a  clock  for  the  first  time.  Of  the  various 
guesses,  that  of  a  man  who  knew  how  to  make  similar  objects 
would  be  nearest  the  truth,  e.g.  one  who  understood  the 
construction  of  machinery  when  he  saw  a  different  kind  of 
machine  :  but  none  the  less  he  will  never  on  that  account 5 
know  for  certain.  There  are  then  three  kinds  of  knowledge  : 

1  Werner,  Johannes  Duns  Scotus  (Wien,  1881),  p.  76. 

1  Werner,  Die  nachscotistische  Scholastik  (Wien,  1883),  p.  82. 

*  Scritti  filosofici  inediti,  ed.  Papini  (Lanciano,  Carabba,  1910). 

*  See  Gentile's  observations  on  Papini's  edition,   in  the  Critica, 
review  viii.  62-5. 

6  Papini's  edition  has  "  po'  "  (little) :  but  his  source,  the  Marcian 
MS.,  has  an  abbreviation  to  be  read  as  "  pero  "  (therefore). 


286      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

first,  knowledge  how  to  make  the  object :  secondly,  experience 
of  it :  and  thirdly,  guessing  at  possibilities."  This  thought, 
then,  namely  that  objects  are  known  by  their  creator,  and 
that  God  knows  objects  because  He  creates  them,  seems  to 
have  been  current  in  the  schools  :  and  this  explains  the  fact 
of  its  reappearing  in  an  incidental  manner  and  as  an  obvious 
truth  in  Francesco  Sanchez's  Quod  nihil  scitur  (1581)  where 
it  is  declared  impossible  "  perfecte  cognoscere  quis  quae  non 
creavit ;  nee  Deus  creare  potuisset  nee  creata  regere  quae  non 
Perfecte  precognovisset 1  (that  one  should  know  perfectly 
things  which  he  has  not  created  :  nor  could  God  have  been 
able  to  create  nor  after  creating  them  to  control  things  which 
He  had  not  perfectly  foreknown). 

But  need  we  continue  to  look  for  it  in  the  guise  of  a  casual 
remark  or  an  isolated  proposition,  devoid  of  philosophical 
connexion,  in  the  works  of  philosophers  or  the  lecture-rooms 
of  the  schools  ?  Did  it  not  simply  form  a  part  of  the  common 
thought  which  daily  declares  that  the  man  who  has  made  a 
thing  knows  it  better  than  he  who  has  not  made  it  ?  Probably 
a  little  attention  would  reveal  it  in  many  and  dissimilar 
treatises  ;  and  for  my  own  part,  while  reading  the  Chronicon 
of  Otto  of  Freising  the  other  day,  I  came  across  it  in  the 
introduction  to  the  third  book,  where  the  chronicler,  writing 
as  is  well  known  under  the  influence  of  St.  Augustine's  Civitas 
Dei,  is  arrested  by  the  objection  that  God's  designs  in  history 
are  inscrutable,  and  delivers  himself  of  the  following  reflections  : 
"  What  then  shall  we  do  ?  If  we  cannot  understand,  shall 
we  hold  our  peace  ?  Then  who  will  reply  to  those  who  flatter, 
repel  those  who  attack,  and  by  the  reason  and  might  of  his 
words  confute  those  who  would  destroy  the  faith  that  is  in 
us  ?  So  we  cannot  understand  the  secret  counsels  of  God, 
and  yet  we  are  often  compelled  to  give  a  reasonable  account 
of  these  things.  What  ?  Shall  we  reason  about  things 
which  we  do  not  understand  ?  We  can  give  reasons,  but 
human  reasons,  when  yet  we  cannot  understand  the  divine 
reasons.  And  thus  it  happens  that  when  we  speak  of  theo- 
logical matters,  lacking  the  right  words  for  them,  we  being 
men  use  our  own  words  ;  and  in  speaking  of  so  great  a  God  in 
human  language,  we  use  our  words  the  more  boldly  quo  ipsum 
figmentum  nostrum  cognoscere  non  dubitamus,  because  we 
never  doubt  that  we  know  the  thing  we  have  ourselves  formed  : 
quis  enim  melius  cognoscit  quam  qui  creavit  ?  for  who  knows 

1  Appendix  to  his  Opera  medico,  (Tolosae  Tectasogum,  1636),  p.  10. 


APPENDIX  III  287 

a  thing  better  than  he  who  has  created  it  ?  "  *  The  logic  of  the 
Abbot  of  Freising  at  this  point  may  be  thought  a  trifle  sophisti- 
cal :  but  the  fact  remains  that  he  refers  to  a  common  opinion 
that  he  knows  things  who  has  made  them. 

But  probably  Vico  was  stimulated  to  the  establishment 
of  his  criterion  less  by  certain  tendencies  of  Scotism  or  by 
current  opinions  than  by  the  philosophers  of  the  Renaissance, 
which  he  considered  the  golden  age  of  metaphysical  study, 
when  shone,  as  he  says,  "  Marsilio  Ficino,  Pico  della  Mirandola, 
Augustino  Nifo  and  Augustino  Steuco,  Jacopo  Mazzoni, 
Alessandro  Piccolomini,  Matteo  Acquaviva  and  Francesco 
Patrizio."  2  In  Ficino,  whose  name  he  couples  with  those  of 
Plato  and  Plotinus,3  and  especially  in  his  Theologia  Platonica, 
Vico  could  read  a  magnificent  description  of  the  productive 
character  of  the  divine  wisdom  and  its  parallelism  with  that 
of  the  geometrician.  Nature,  says  Ficino,  which  is  divine 
art,  differs  from  human  art  in  that  it  produces  its  creations 
from  within,  by  living  reasons  :  and  "  it  does  not  touch  the 
surface  of  matter  by  means  of  a  hand  or  any  other  external 
instrument,  as  the  soul  of  a  geometer  touches  the  dust  when 
he  describes  figures  upon  the  earth,  but  perinde  ut  geometrica 
mens  materiam  intrinsecus  phantasticam  fabricat,  it  operates 
like  the  mind  of  a  geometer  creating  an  imaginary  matter 
from  within  itself.  For  as  the  geometer's  mind,  while  it 
considers  within  itself  the  nature  of  figures,  forms  internally 
by  pictures  the  image  of  figures,  and  by  means  of  this  image 
forms  an  imaginary  spirit  without  any  toil  or  design,  so  in 
the  divine  art  of  nature  a  wisdom  of  some  kind  by  means  of 
intellectual  processes  endows  with  natural  seeds  the  life- 
giving  and  motive  force  itself  which  is  its  companion."  4  Vico 
must  have  recalled  this  passage  in  Ficino  when  in  his  inaugural 
lecture  of  1699  he  compared  God,  "  the  artist  of  nature,"  to 
the  human  mind  which  "  we  may  without  impiety  call  the 
God  of  art,"  just  as  he  must  have  remembered  it  in  the  De 

1  Ottonis  Episcopi   Frisigensis   Opera,  ex   recens.    R.    Wilmans,   i. 
Chronicon  (Hannoveriae,  1867),  pp.  118-19. 
*  Autob.  ed.  cit.  p.  21. 

3  Ibid.  p.  25. 

4  Theologia  Platonica  (Bale,  1561),  i.  123.     This  passage  of  Ficino 
has  been  quoted  and  commented  on  by  my  friend  Gentile,  in  a  highly 
important  monograph  on  La  prima  fuse  della  filosofia  di  G.  B.  Vico  (viz. 
the  "  inaugural  lectures  "),  published  in  the  miscellany  in  honour  of 
Francesco  Torraca  (1912,  see  infra,  p.  310)   and  read  in  MS.  by  myself, 
thanks  to  the  courtesy  of  the  author. 


988      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

antiquissima  where  he  compares  God  to  the  geometrician.1 
Vico  might  however  have  found  thoughts  of  this  kind  in 
various  Renaissance  philosophers,  not  only  in  Ficino  :  among 
others,  in  Girolamo  Cardano,  who  contrasts  divine  and  human 
knowledge,  though  with  a  different  conclusion  ;  and  restricts 
the  one  to  finite  objects  ("  for  understanding  is  brought  about 
by  a  kind  of  proportion,  proportione  quadam  fit,  and  there  is 
no  proportion  between  the  infinite  and  the  finite  "),  denying 
that  man  can  know  God,  for  as  Vico  said  later  in  almost  the 
same  words,  "  if  I  knew  God,  I  should  be  God,"  si  scirem  Dens 
essem.  Thus  he  postulated  "  other  sciences,  and  other  modes 
of  understanding,  entirely  different  from  this  of  ours  ;  more 
true,  more  solid,  more  firm,  as  a  body  is  than  its  shadow  :  and 
again  other  principles  which  we  can  by  no  reason  apprehend." 
And  not  only  did  he  postulate  them,  but  among  the  human 
sciences  he  observed  one  which  as  opposed  to  the  natural 
sciences  reached  not  merely  the  surfaces  of  things  but  almost 
the  things  themselves,  namely  mathematics.  "  The  human 
soul,  situated  in  the  body,  cannot  attain  to  the  substances  of 
things,  but  wanders  about  upon  their  surfaces  by  the  help  of 
the  senses,  examining  measurements,  actions,  resemblances 
and  doctrines.  But  the  knowledge  of  the  mind,  which  creates 
the  fact,  is  in  a  sense  itself  the  fact,  just  as  even  among  human 
sciences  the  knowledge  of  a  triangle,  that  it  has  three  angles 
equal  to  two  right  angles,  is  practically  identical  with  the 
truth  itself  (scientia  vero  mentis,  quae  res  facit,  est  quasi  ipsa 
res,  veluti  etiam  in  humanis  scientia  trigoni,  quod  habeat  ires 
angulos  duobus  rectis  aequales,  eadem  ferme  est  ipsi  veritati], 
whence  it  is  clear  that  there  is  in  us  a  natural  science  of  a 
different  kind  from  true  science."  2  Here,  in  the  definition  of 
divine  knowledge  and  of  the  procedure  of  human  knowledge 
in  the  case  of  mathematics,  as  opposed  to  that  of  physical 
science,  is  implicit  the  principle  that  true  knowledge  consists 
in  the  identity  of  thought  with  its  object. 

The  idea  of  the  opposition  of  mathematics  to  physical 
science,  in  the  certainty  of  the  one  and  the  uncertainty  of  the 
other,  persisted  in  the  Neapolitan  philosophers  and  scientists 

1  See  Gentile's  monograph,  mentioned  above. 

*  These  passages  of  the  Tractatus  de  arcanis  aeternitatis,  ch.  iv.,  and 
of  the  De  subtilitate,  bks.  xi.  and  xxi.  are  quoted  and  commented  on 
by  Fiorentino,  Bernardino  Telesio  ossia  studi  storici  su  I'  idea  della  natura 
nel  risorgimento  italiatto  (Florence,  Le  Monnier,  1872),  i.  212-13, 
does  not  fail  to  observe  the  relations  with  Vico's  criterion. 


APPENDIX  III  289 

of  Vice's  youth,  even  if  they  lost  sight  of  the  reason  of  this 
opposition.  Tommaso  Cornelio  in  his  "  progymnasma " 
De  ratione  philosophandi  (1661)  after  reviewing  the  errors 
produced  by  the  illusions  of  sense  in  physical  science,  says, 
"  the  contemplations  of  mathematics  are  not  subjected  to 
errors  of  this  kind,  dealing  as  they  do  with  things  whose  images 
are  not  introduced  into  the  mind  by  the  senses  ;  for  the  mind 
can  by  itself  adequately  conceive  figures  and  numbers,  whose 
properties  and  analogies  are  examined  by  mathematicians, 
without  aid  from  sense."  *  This  ought  to  be  emphasised, 
since  it  seems  highly  probable  that  Vico  was  stimulated  to 
the  establishment  of  his  general  theory  of  knowledge  by 
reflection  upon  mathematics  and  the  contrast  between  it  and 
physical  science.  In  fact  the  Latin  speeches,  our  earliest 
documents  for  his  studies,  though  they  show  the  influence 
of  Ficino  and  a  certain  amount  of  Cartesianism,2  are  never 
dominated  by  this  general  criterion.  It  is  only  in  the  last 
of  these  speeches,  that  of  1707,  that  the  distinction  between 
mathematics  and  natural  science  begins  to  appear ;  in  the 
next  year  it  is  clearly  stated  in  the  De  ratione  studiorum,  where 
it  takes  the  form  of  a  general  criterion.  "  We  demonstrate 
geometry  because  we  make  it :  if  we  could  demonstrate 
physical  facts,  we  should  be  creating  them.  For  the  true 
forms  of  things  exist  only  in  God  the  greatest  and  best,  and 
to  these  the  nature  of  them  conforms  "  (geometrica  demon- 
stramus  quid  facimus :  si  physica  demonstrare  possemus, 
faceremus.  In  uno  enim  Deo  Opt.  Max.  sunt  verae  rerum 
formae,  quibus  earundem  est  conformata  natura).  And  this 
theory  attained  its  full  development  in  1710  in  the  De  anti- 
quissima. 

Such  are  the  probable  precedents,  or  as  the  common  but 
inaccurate  metaphor  expresses  it,  "  sources  "  of  Vice's  theory 
of  knowledge.  I  do  not  think  that  the  formation  of  this 
theory  can  have  been  influenced  by  the  propositions  of  Geulinx 
and  Malebranche  which  have  been  pointed  out  to  me,3  namely 
that  "  no  one  can  make  that  which  he  does  not  know,"  and 
that  "  God  alone  knows  his  works,  because  he  foreknows  his 
action."  In  these  propositions  the  old  Thomistic  doctrine  is 

1  Thomae  Cornell!  consentini  Progymnasmata  physica  (Naples, 
MDCLXXXVIII.),  p.  70  :  cf.  also  p.  64. 

*  See  Gentile's  monograph,  mentioned  above. 

8  By  A.  Pastore  in  a  review  of  my  monograph  on  Vico  in  the  Giorn. 
star.  d.  lett.  ital.  Iviii.,  cf.  pp.  400-402. 

U 


ago      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

substantially  summarised.  Much  more  tenable  would  be  a 
connexion  or  at  least  a  comparison  with  Spinoza ;  we  may 
recall  the  Spinozistic  identification  of  the  ordo  et  connexio 
idearum  and  the  ordo  et  connexio  rerum.  Another  ingenious, 
but  I  think,  inaccurate  view  is  that  "  the  analytic  geometry 
of  Descartes  was  the  introduction  of  the  genetic  principle  into 
the  study  of  geometrical  objects,"  so  that  the  principle  verum 
ipsum  factum  "  before  being  formulated  by  Vico  had  been 
practised  by  Descartes  "  ;  and  Vico  in  the  De  antiquissima 
"  adopted  the  scientific  method  of  Descartes,  which  he  stated 
as  the  convertibility  of  the  true  with  the  created,"  raising  it 
"  from  a  certitude  to  a  criterion."  1  We  are  dealing  here  not 
with  practice,  but  simply  with  the  theory  of  method  :  for 
this  method,  conceived  in  its  universality,  just  so  far  as  it  is 
practical  has  always  been  practised  ;  not  by  Descartes  alone, 
and  not  only  by  analytic  geometry. 

We  should  certainly  be  better  informed  as  to  the  precedents 
of  Vico's  criterion  if  we  knew  more  of  his  studies  preparatory 
to  the  De  antiquissima,  and  if  in  general  we  had  more  literary 
evidence  about  his  youth.  Perhaps  even  the  precedents  I 
have  indicated,  which  I  only  called  probable,  are  not  quite 
free  from  an  element  of  chance ;  they  may  be  connexions 
only  imagined  by  myself  and  non-existent  for  Vico's  mind, 
while  others  not  accidental  may  perhaps  be  still  unknown, 
or  await  discovery  by  a  student  more  fortunate  than  myself. 
But  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  remark  that  the  search  for 
"  precedents  "  does  nothing  to  explain  the  new  thought  that 
followed  them  ;  much  less  does  it  detract  from  the  value  of 
that  thought.  Such  information,  though  on  the  one  hand  it 
enriches  our  knowledge  of  the  history  of  philosophy,  on  the 
other  hand  has  absolutely  no  effect  upon  the  determinate 
thought  under  examination.  It  is  valuable  in  the  biography 
of  a  philosopher,  but  valueless  for  the  comprehension  of  the 
proper  meaning  of  the  new  theory,  which  must  be  sought 
essentially  in  the  new  problem  which  it  faces  and  attempts  to 
solve.  In  the  history  of  philosophy  the  same  principles  hold 
good  as  in  that  of  literature.  Take  for  example  the  episode 
of  Argante  and  Tancred  in  canto  xix.  of  "  Jerusalem  De- 
livered "  ;  Argante,  while  taking  up  his  position  for  the  fight 
with  his  adversary,  turns  "  as  if  in  doubt  "  to  the  "  afflicted 
city,"  towards  Jerusalem  attacked  by  the  crusaders  ;  and 

1  A.  A.  Zottoli,  G.  B.  Vico,  in  Cultura,  Rome,  xxx.  (1911)  pp. 
422-3. 


APPENDIX  III  2gi 

when  Tancred  brutally  mocks  him,  asking  whether  he  does 
this  out  of  fear,  he  replies  : — 

I  was  but  thinking  how  this  city, 
The  immemorial  green  of  Juda's  realm, 
Is  falling,  vanquished ;  whose  unhappy  fate 
I  have  in  vain  endeavoured  to  repel. 

Here  the  precedents  are  easily  found;  Hector  parting  from 
Andromache  and  foreseeing  the  unhappy  fate  of  Ilion,  Priam 
and  all  his  people  (eo-o-erat  fjnap,  etc.,  II.  vi.  448-9)  ;  or  Aeneas 
as  he  gazes  upon  its  downfall  (ruit  alto  a  culmine  Troia : 
...  si  Pergama  dextra,  etc.,  A  en.  ii.  290-92).  And  yet  the 
tragic  melancholy  of  Argante  is  an  entirely  new  creation,  and 
altogether  original  to  Tasso. 

Ficino,  Cardano,  Tommaso  Cornelio,  Scotus  and  Occam, 
and  any  others  who  have  been  or  shall  be  added  to  the  list, 
have  or  may  have  anticipated  this  or  that  element  of  Vice's 
formula  :  and  yet  when  we  turn  from  their  statements  to  the 
De  antiquissima  and  the  polemics  that  follow  it,  and  read  the 
definition  of  science,  of  true  science,  as  the  conversion  of  the 
true  with  the  created,  it  strikes  us  as  an  entirely  original 
theory.  The  fact  is  that  Vico  had  not  to  face  the  same 
opponents  and  to  solve  the  same  problems  that  were  faced 
and  solved  by  the  schoolmen,  nominalists  and  mystics  of  the 
Middle  Ages  or  by  the  Platonists  and  naturalists  of  the  Re- 
naissance, nor  yet  those  of  Descartes  in  his  Discours  sur  la 
methode  ;  and  the  saying  that  "  he  alone  knows  things  who 
creates  them  "  acquires  a  new  value,  a  new  meaning  (and 
this  is  its  proper  meaning)  from  its  being  used  to  refute  the 
Cartesian  cogito  and  the  doctrine  of  immediate  knowledge. 
Vico  takes  an  old  rusty  sword  and  makes  of  it  at  least  a  glitter- 
ing and  trenchant  weapon.  For  the  same  reason  the  phrase 
is  no  longer  a  mere  accident  or  incident,  but  the  starting-point 
of  a  special  study,  the  foundation  of  a  new  philosophy,  and 
Vico  could  quite  well  describe  it  as  something  not  learnt  from 
another  but  thought  out  and  established  by  himself.  And 
when  he  wants  to  find  some  original  for  it,  he  invents  a  history 
which  is  really  a  fiction  or  a  myth  ;  namely  the  history  of 
ancient  Italian  wisdom  which  used  this  criterion  as  its  supreme 
guide  and  left  a  trace  of  it  in  the  Latin  language  in  the  synony- 
mity of  the  words  verum  and  factum. 

The  refutation  of  the  Cartesian  criterion  (which  De  Sanctis 
thought  "  complete,"  the  "  last  word  of  criticism  "  1)  is  the 
1  Opp.  ed.  Ferrari,  ii.  166. 


292      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

negative  aspect  of  Vice's  theory  of  knowledge.  Its  positive 
side,  absent  in  the  De  antiquissima,  is  developed  as  we  have 
said  in  the  Scienza  Nuova,  where  the  human  knowledge  of 
the  mind  and  of  history  is  raised  to  the  level  of  divine  know- 
ledge. And  since  some  critics  have  not  only  chosen  to  ignore 
the  obvious  difference  between  these  two  phases  of  Vice's 
thought  but  have  spoken  of  a  too  easy  transition  from  the  one 
to  the  other,  it  will  be  well  to  observe  that  this  transition  was 
for  Vico  if  not  entirely  conscious  at  least  very  slow  and  very 
difficult.  He  must  at  one  time  have  shared  Descartes'  and 
Malebranche's  contempt  for  history  ;  in  the  speech  of  1701 
he  even  echoed  a  saying  of  Descartes  against  philologists  : — 
"  You,  Philologist,  boast  of  knowing  everything  about  the 
furniture  and  clothing  of  the  Romans  and  of  being  more 
intimate  with  the  quarters,  tribes  and  streets  of  Rome  than 
with  those  of  your  own  city.  Why  this  pride  ?  You  know 
no  more  than  did  the  potter,  the  cook,  the  cobbler,  the 
summoner,  the  auctioneer  of  Rome."  1  But  eleven  years  later, 
in  the  second  reply  to  the  Giornale  dei  letterati,  Vico  refers  to 
the  same  phrase  with  the  contrary  conclusion,  and  deplores 
that  "  the  study  of  languages  is  to-day  considered  profitless, 
thanks  to  the  authority  of  Descartes,  who  says  that  to  know 
Latin  is  to  know  no  more  than  did  Cicero's  servant-girl."  2 
Vico  had  in  the  meantime  become  conscious  of  the  importance 
of  the  "  probable  "  knowledge  of  history  and  politics.  He 
refers  to  his  former  anti-historical  Cartesianism  in  a  passage 
of  the  De  constantia  philologiae  which  has  generally  escaped 
notice.  Speaking  of  philology  he  says  :  "I,  who  have  all 
my  life  delighted  in  the  use  of  reason  more  than  in  memory, 
seem  to  myself  the  more  ignorant  the  more  facts  I  know  in 
philology.  Whence  Rene  Descartes  and  Malebranche  were 
not  far  wrong  when  they  said  that  it  was  alien  to  the  philo- 
sopher to  work  much  and  for  long  at  philology."  But  he 
adds  that  later  he  perceived  that  "  these  two  most  notable 
philosophers  ought,  it  they  had  been  zealous  for  the  common 
glory  of  Christendom,  not  for  the  private  glory  of  philosophers, 
so  to  have  pressed  forward  the  study  of  philology  as  to  see 
whether  philology  could  be  attached  to  the  principles  of  philo- 
sophy (ut  viderent  philosophi  an  philologiam  ad  philosophiae 
principia  revocare  possent}." 3  The  elevation  of  philology 

1  Orazioni  latine,  ed.  Galasso,  p.  28. 
*  Opp.  ed.  Ferrari,  ii.  166. 
3  Ibid.  232. 


APPENDIX  III  293 

to  the  rank  of  philosophy,  of  the  knowledge  of  the  world  of  man 
to  the  level  of  divine  knowledge,  is  the  positive  aspect  of  Vice's 
theory  of  knowledge.  It  is  this  that  is  developed  in  the 
Scienza  Nuova,  towards  which  the  De  antiquissima,  with  the 
indication  of  the  historical  sciences  as  against  Cartesianism, 
only  prepared  the  way. 

Thus  of  the  three  points  in  which  I  placed  the  originality 
and  value  of  Vico's  first  theory  of  knowledge,  two,  namely 
the  criterion  of  knowledge  opposed  to  that  of  Descartes  and  the 
defence  of  concrete  as  opposed  to  abstract  sciences,  are  not 
only  left  intact  by  the  inquiries  into  their  sources  which  I 
have  just  described,  but  are  actually  reinforced. 

There  remains  the  third  of  my  points  :  the  Vician  theory  of 
the  arbitrary  nature  of  mathematics,  the  originality  of  which 
has  also  been  impugned  by  arguments  which  seem  to  me  to 
have  even  less  foundation  than  those  I  have  examined 
above. 

Do  we  find  the  doctrine  that  the  fundamental  objects  of 
mathematics,  the  unit  of  arithmetic  and  the  point  of  geometry, 
are  unreal  or  fictitious,  propounded  before  Vico's  time  ?  Do 
we  find  it — this  is  the  chief  point — propounded  not  as  a  casual 
remark  or  an  intuition  of  a  truth,  but  as  a  consciously  reasoned 
concept  from  which  legitimate  consequences  are  drawn  as 
to  the  limitations  of  mathematics  and  its  inability  to  furnish 
real  knowledge  of  mind,  nature  and  history  ? 

All  through  the  Middle  Ages  the  Aristotelian  theory  of 
mathematics  is  continually  enunciated.  According  to  this 
theory  mathematics  is  the  most  certain  of  the  sciences  because 
the  simplest ;  it  abstracts  from  all  sensible  matter,  but  not 
from  intelligible  matter  (v\r)  vo?/™/)  which  exists  in  sensible 

objects    but    not    qua    Sensible    (ev    TOIS    ato-^rots    vrrdpxovcra 

pr)  y  aio-OyTa.).1  According  to  Cassiodorus  it  constituted 
the  body  of  doctrinalis  as  opposed  to  naturalis  (physical) 
science  and  divina.  Albertus  Magnus  followed  Aristotle  in 
defining  mathematical  entities  as  separable  "  in  imagination," 
"  in  thought  "  but  not  "  in  reality  "  (in  phantasmate,  secundum 
rationem,  non  secundum  esse)  from  the  sensible  matter  to  which 
"  they  are  conjoined  by  existence  "  (per  esse  sunt  coniunctae]  ; 
and  St.  Thomas  said  that  mathematics  "  though  the  objects 
it  considers  are  not  separate,  yet  considers  them  in  so  far  as 
they  are  separate  "  (etsi  sunt  non  separata  ea  quae  consider  at, 

1  Metaphys.  vi.  1036  a. 


294      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

tamen  consider  at  ea  in  quantum  sunt  separata]  -1  The  arbitrary 
character  of  its  foundations  was  never  suspected.  Dante, 
when  he  wished  to  indicate  "  the  things  which  not  being 
subject  to  our  power  we  can  only  contemplate  and  not  create," 
enumerated  "  the  objects  of  mathematics,  physical  science 
and  divinity  "  (mathematica,  physica  et  divina).2 

Just  as  mathematics  was  not  always  equally  valued  in 
antiquity,  so,  and  much  more  so,  after  the  Renaissance  of 
learning,  it  was  variously  exalted  or  despised.  Giordano 
Bruno  satirised  the  abuse  of  it,  and  said  that  without  physical 
science  "to  be  able  to  calculate  and  measure,  to  understand 
geometry  and  perspective,  is  but  a  pastime  of  ingenious  fools," 
and  warned  his  readers  against  confusing  mathematical 
"  signs  "  and  real  "  causes  "  :  "a  reflected  or  direct  ray,  an 
acute  or  obtuse  angle,  a  perpendicular,  incident  or  straight 
line,  a  greater  or  smaller  arc  of  a  circle,  such  and  such  an 
aspect,  are  mathematical  circumstances  and  not  natural 
causes.  To  play  with  geometry  is  one  thing,  to  prove  by 
means  of  nature  is  another.  It  is  not  lines  and  angles  that 
make  the  fire  more  or  less  hot,  but  near  and  far  situations, 
short  and  long  spaces  of  time."  3  Campanella  flatly  denied 
Aristotle's  assertion  of  the  superiority  of  mathematics  to 
physical  science,  declaring  that  its  alleged  purity  was  really 
weakness  (debilitas),  its  simplicity  was  inability  to  include 
more  things  (plura  accipere),  its  universality  a  contradiction 
against  the  nature  of  true  science  which  is  always  of  particulars 
(de  singularibus) ,  its  demonstrative  method  by  signs  not  by 
causes  (per  signa,  non  per  causas)  ;  and  finally  that  it  is  not 
a  science  investigated  for  its  own  sake  and  is  valueless  unless 
it  is  applied  to  physical  matters  (nisi  applicentur  physicis 
rebus).*  Bacon  is  of  the  same  opinion,  that  mathematics 
taken  by  itself  is  useless,  and  is  useful  only  as  an  "  auxiliary 
science,"  a  "  great  appendix "  to  the  physical  sciences.5 
These  definitions  and  restrictions,  and  others  like  them, 
might  have  yielded  as  a  conclusion  the  entirely  instrumental 

1  The  passages  of  Cassiodorus,  Albertus  and  St.  Thomas  may  be 
found  collected  in  Marietan,  Probleme  de  la  classification  des  sciences 
d'Aristote  d  saint  Thomas  (Paris,  1901),  see  pp.  80,  168-9,  182-3,  185-6. 

1  De  monarchia,  i.  c.  3. 

8  La  Cena  delle  ceneri  (1584)  in  his  Opere  italiane,  ed.  Gentile,  i.  62, 
107-8. 

4  Logicorum  libri  tres,  bk.  ii.  art.  7-10  (in  the  Philosophiae  rationales 
pars  secunda,  Parish's,  1637,  pp.  433-7). 

s  De  dignilate  et  augmentis  scientiarum,  bk.  iii.  c.  6. 


APPENDIX  III  295 

and  practical  character  of  mathematical  science  :  but  the 
conclusion  was  not  drawn,  so  far  as  I  know  ;  and  Bacon 
himself  considered  mathematics  as  in  itself  too  exclusively 
and  uselessly  theoretical.  "  For  since,"  he  goes  on  in  the 
passage  above  quoted,  "  it  is  a  fact  of  human  nature,  no  doubt 
to  the  great  detriment  of  science,  that  it  rejoices  in  the  open 
plains  of  generalities,  so  to  speak,  rather  than  in  the  forests 
and  closes  of  the  particular,  no  discovery  is  more  pleasant 
and  gratifying  than  mathematics  wherewith  to  sate  this  love 
of  wandering  and  of  meditation." 

The  "  creation "  of  mathematics  spoken  of  by  Ficino, 
Cardano  and  others  signified  a  mental  production  entirely 
free  from  material  presuppositions,  and  for  that  reason  not 
less  true  but  true  in  a  higher  sense.  It  is  almost  the  same 
sense  as  that  found  in  Descartes  and  his  followers.  Locke 
asserts  the  reality  of  mathematical  truths,  though  he  admits 
that  there  are  in  nature  no  figures  corresponding  to  the 
archetypes  existing  in  the  mind  of  the  geometrician ; 1  and 
Leibnitz,  commenting  on  this  passage,  says  that  "  the  ideas 
of  justice  and  temperance  are  no  more  our  own  invention  than 
those  of  the  circle  and  the  square."  2  Tommaso  Cornelio, 
whom  we  have  quoted  on  the  contrast  between  physical 
science  and  mathematics,  also  believed  that  mathematics 
rested  on  "  certain  notions  and  understandings  which  nature 
has  put  into  the  minds  of  men  as  foundations  of  science."  3 

Another  kind  of  "  creation,"  and  one  which  seems  to  have 
more  connexion  with  Vice's  "  finger e,"  is  discussed  in  a  passage 
of  Aristotle's  Metaphysics  which  has  had  a  good  deal  of 
influence.  "  We  find  also,"  Aristotle  says,  "  geometrical 
figures  by  actualising  them  (Ivepyefy) ,  because  they  are  found 
by  being  divided  :  if  they  were  divided,  they  would  be  obvious, 
but  in  reality  they  exist  potentially.  Why  has  the  triangle 
two  right  angles  ?  Because  the  angles  round  one  point  are 
equal  to  two  right  angles.  If  then  we  construct  the  angle 
along  one  side,  it  would  become  plain  to  any  one  looking  at  it. 
Why  is  the  angle  in  the  semicircle  equal  to  a  right  angle  ? 
Because  if  there  are  three  equal  lines,  two  in  the  base  and 
one  drawn  perpendicular  to  it,  it  is  plain  to  any  one  who  sees 
it  and  knows  that.  Whence  it  is  evident  that  we  discover 
things  that  exist  potentially  by  reducing  them  to  actuality. 

1  Essay,  iv.  ch.  4,  §  6. 

z  Nouveaux  essais,  iv.  ch.  4. 

3  Op.  cit.  p.  64. 


2g6      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

This  is  because  the  actuality  is  understanding,  and  the  potenti- 
ality proceeds  from  the  actuality  ;  so  we  know  by  making 
(KOI  810.  TOVTO  TTOIOWTCS  yiyvoxTKowtv)."  But  these  observa- 
tions belong  to  the  explanations  given  by  Aristotle  in  this 
passage  of  the  conceptions  of  potentiality  and  actuality  ; 
they  are  not  at  all  opposed  to  his  theory  of  mathematics  as 
studying  the  intelligible  matter  which  subsists  in  sensible 
matter,  and  they  only  explain  the  difference  between  potential 
and  actual  truth.  In  the  same  way  we  sometimes  find  in 
later  philosophers  the  assertion  that  mathematical  truths  are 
demonstrated  and  problems  resolved  "  by  making  them." 
Thus  Sarpi  writes  in  the  passage  mentioned  above  :  "in 
mathematics,  he  who  constructs  knows  because  he  makes, 
and  he  who  analyses  learns  because  he  seeks  how  the  thing  is 
made.  The  mode  of  composition  then  belongs  to  the  inventive 
faculty  and  that  of  analysis  to  the  discursive  :  the  former 
is  that  of  problems,  the  latter  of  theorems  ;  the  latter  are 
demonstrated  by  analysis,  the  former  by  composition."  2 

It  has  also  been  recently  asserted  that  the  Vician  philo- 
sophy of  mathematics  reappears  bodily  in  Galileo  and  his 
school  ;  3  an  astounding  fact  when  baldly  stated,  since  even 


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&v  fjv  ei)0i)s  Sij\ov.  Sid.  rl  T\  iv  7i/MKVK\l(p  6p6))  Ka66\ov  ;  dibri  ta.v  tcrai  rpets, 
tf  re  jSciats  860  xa.1  7}  £K  ptffov  tiriffra-Qelaa.  6p0-/i,  lS6vn  SrjXor  r<$  tKtivo  eiddri. 
S)<TT€  ipavepbv  Sri  T&  Svvdfj.ei  6vra  e/j  Iv^pyeiav  d.vay6/J.eva  evpiffKerai.  atriov 
d'  Sri  v6i)ffis  -f)  Mpyeia  '  GXTT'  ti-  fvepyelas  rj  S6va/j.is.  Kal  Sid  TOVTO  iroiovvTes 
yiyv(j)ffKov<rH>. 

8  Scritti  filosofici,  ed.  Papini,  p.  7.  In  a  passage  of  the  Arte  di  ben 
pensare  (Scritti,  p.  72)  Sarpi  returns  to  mathematics  and,  while  agreeing 
that  it  is  less  uncertain  than  the  other  sciences  because  in  it  "  the  mode 
and  the  proposition  "  are  more  clearly  shown,  goes  on  to  say  "  it  is  also 
made  in  the  same  manner  (as  the  others)  :  it  is  not  free  from  the  sus- 
picion of  being  not  quite  true."  But  clearly  he  is  here  speaking  of 
the  application  of  mathematics,  of  the  act  of  counting  and  measuring 
physical  objects  :  "  this  alone  is  certain  :  I  count  and  reason  in  this 
manner,  just  as  in  eating  honey  I  feel  the  effect  which  I  call  sweet  ; 
where  I  may  be  in  error  is  the  question  whether  this  effect  comes  from 
the  object  or  from  the  disposition  of  my  taste  :  and  there  is  no  science 
where  there  are  number  and  measurement,  for  all  we  can  know  is  that 
we  measure  or  count  like  this,  and  that  the  measure  comes  in  or  is  used 
as  many  times  as  the  thing  seems  to  be  equal  to  one  such  part  and  that 
equality  is  a  concept  of  ours  by  which  we  express  what  then  seems  to 
happen." 

3  G.  Papini,  La  Novitd  di  Vico  in  L'  Anima,  Florence,  September 
1911,  pp.  264-6  ;  cf.  on  this  article,  Critica,  x.  56-8. 


APPENDIX  III  297 

though  Vico  opposes  and  prefers  the  great  Pisan  to  Descartes 
for  the  moderate  use  he  makes  of  mathematics  in  physical 
science,  it  is  certain  that  for  Galileo  as  for  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
mathematics  had  an  objective  validity,  and  the  book  of  nature 
is  written  in  mathematical  characters  and  geometrical  figures. 
In  any  case,  the  passage  of  Galileo  which  has  been  quoted  in 
this  reference,  on  the  intensive  identity  of  human  with  divine 
knowledge,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  present  question,  and 
another  passage  which  asserts  that  the  explanations  of  terms 
are  free,  and  it  is  in  the  power  of  every  workman  to  circum- 
scribe and  define  in  his  own  way  the  things  he  is  dealing  with, 
without  ever  being  led  by  this  into  error  or  falsehood,  and  that 
for  instance  one  may  call  the  bow  the  stern  and  the  stern  the 
bow,  says  nothing  but  a  platitude  hardly  worth  saying  except 
by  way  of  adorning  a  page  of  controversial  rhetoric.1  In 
controversy  one  is  often  obliged  to  insist  upon  platitudes, 
and  the  controversy  upon  which  I  am  now  engaged  itself 
presents  too  many  examples. 

A  passage  from  the  Lezioni  accademiche  of  Galileo's  pupil 
Evangelista  Torricelli  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  difference 
between  physical  and  mathematical  definitions  seems  at  first 
sight  more  convincing.  But  the  critic  who  has  called  attention 
to  this  passage  2  says  too  much  when  he  asserts  that  "it  is 
beyond  doubt  that  Vico  had  read  it,"  since  it  is  unquestion- 
able that  Vico  had  not  read  it.  The  Lezioni  accademiche  were 
published  first  posthumously  in  1715  3  and  Vice's  theory  of 
mathematics  is  expounded  in  the  De  ratione  in  1708  and  the 
De  antiquissima,  1710.  This,  it  is  true,  is  of  secondary  import- 
ance, for  Vico  may  have  known  Torricelli's  doctrine  through 
indirect  channels,  through  other  books  or  even  orally  through 
some  Neapolitan  friend  or  pupil  of  Torricelli ;  in  any  case, 
if  the  latter's  theory  though  unknown  to  Vico  was  really 
identical  with  his  own,  the  similarity  of  ideas  between  the 
two  would  be  of  the  greatest  interest.  Unfortunately  the 

1  Papini  probably  owes  this  passage  to  a  small  anthology  of  Galileo 
by  Favaro  (Florence,  Barbera,  1910),  p.  303,  which  refers  to  the  national 
edition  of  his  Opere,  iv.  631 ;  here  the  passage  occurs  in  the  Consider  azioni 
sopra  il  discorso  di  Colombo  (1615). 

*  G.  Papini,  loc.  cit.  pp.  265-6. 

8  Lezioni  accademiche  di  Evangelista  Torricelli,  mathematico  e  filosofo 
del  serenissimo  Ferdinando  II  Granduca  di  Toscana,  lettore  delle  mate- 
matiche  nello  studio  di  Firenze  e  accademico  della  Crusca  (Florence, 
MDCCXV.).  The  editor's  preface  shows  that  the  work  had  not  been 
previously  published. 


2g8      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

critic  has  been  too  hasty,  as  it  seems  to  me,  even  in  his  study 
and  interpretation  of  the  pages  of  Torricelli. 

In  the  passage  in  question,  a  lecture  Delia  leggerezza,  read 
to  the  Accademia  della  Crusca,  Torricelli  controverts,  as  based 
on  mere  appearances  and  not  confirmed  by  facts  and  reasoning, 
Aristotle's  definition  in  the  De  coelo  :  "  heavy  is  that  which 
has  a  natural  property  of  going  towards  the  centre."  He 
remarks  upon  this  :  "  The  definitions  of  Physics  differ  from 
those  of  Mathematics  in  that  the  former  are  obliged  to  adapt 
and  adjust  themselves  to  the  object  defined,  while  the  latter 
mathematical  definitions  are  free  and  can  be  formed  at  the 
will  of  the  geometrician  who  is  defining.  The  reason  is 
perfectly  plain  :  the  things  defined  in  Physics  do  not  come 
into  being  with  the  definition,  they  exist  already  by  themselves 
and  are  found  in  nature  previously.  But  the  things  defined 
by  geometry,  that  is  by  the  science  of  abstraction,  have  no 
existence  in  the  universe  of  the  world  other  than  that  which 
definition  gives  to  them  in  the  universe  of  intelligence.  Thus 
whatever  objects  of  Mathematics  are  defined,  the  same 
objects  will  come  into  existence  simultaneously  with  the 
definition."  1 

The  arbitrary  character  of  mathematics  seems  here  to  be 
clearly  stated.  But  let  us  reserve  our  judgment  and  read  on. 
"  If  I  were  to  say,  the  circle  is  a  plane  figure  with  four  equal 
sides  and  four  right  angles,  this  is  not  at  all  a  false  definition  ; 
but  for  the  rest  of  my  book  I  should  have  to  mean,  whenever 
I  spoke  of  a  circle,  a  certain  figure  which  others  have  called 
a  square.  But  if  a  man  should  say  in  Physics,  '  the  horse  is 
a  rational  animal/  should  we  not  be  justified  in  calling  him 
the  horse  ?  We  must  first  look  very  carefully  to  see  whether 
the  horse  is  a  rational  animal  or  not  and  then  define  it  as  it  is, 
in  order  that  the  physical  definition  may  conform  to  the 
object  and  not  be  counted  defective."  Here  we  see  that  what 
appeared  to  be  a  profound  thought  has  turned  out  to  be  a 
platitude  ;  it  is  indifferent  whether  we  call  the  bow  the  stern 
or  the  stern  the  bow,  said  Galileo,  or,  says  Torricelli  in  his 
turn,  whether  we  call  a  square  a  circle  or  a  circle  a  square  ; 
while  it  does  not  seem  to  him  an  indifferent  matter  whether 
we  call  a  horse  a  rational  animal.  But  even  this  does  not 
prevent  him  from  admitting  later  some  degree  of  arbitrariness 
in  physical  terminology,  when  he  says,  "  since  then  it  is  not 
demonstrated  that  the  intrinsic  principle  of  downward  motion 
1  Op,  cit.  pp.  31-2. 


APPENDIX  III  299 

exists  upon  the  earth,  I  will  accept  this  definition,  if  the 
tests  will  allow  me,  as  the  simple  imposition  of  a  name,  and, 
replacing  the  verb  '  to  be  '  by  the  verb  '  to  be  called,'  I  will 
adapt  the  definition  to  my  own  requirements  thus :  That  is 
called  heavy  which  descends  to  the  centre.  Whenever  any  one 
says,  the  earth  is  heavy,  I  will  agree,  but  always  with  the 
interpretation  that  the  word  '  heavy  '  only  signifies  descend- 
ing in  a  lighter  medium."  l 

It  seems  to  me  then  that  the  difference  which  he  begins 
by  laying  down  between  mathematics  and  physical  science  is 
considerably  obscured  in  the  sequel.  And  indeed  how  could 
Torricelli  have  seriously  thought  that  the  foundation  of 
mathematics  was  a  "  fiction,"  when  among  his  lectures  one 
heard  the  title  "  in  Praise  of  Mathematics  "  ?  In  this  lecture 
he  says,  quite  in  the  Galilean  style  :  "  That  to  read  the  great 
Book  of  the  Universe,  the  book  on  whose  pages  may  be  found 
the  true  philosophy  written  by  God,  mathematics  are  indis- 
pensable, will  be  seen  by  any  one  who  with  noble  thoughts 
aspires  to  the  science  of  the  integral  parts  and  greatest  members 
of  this  huge  body  we  call  the  World.  The  one  alphabet, 
the  only  characters  with  which  we  can  read  the  great  manu- 
script of  the  divine  philosophy  in  the  book  of  the  Universe 
are  those  poor  figures  you  see  in  the  text-books  of  geometry."  2 
The  most  we  can  see  in  these  statements  is  a  vague  and  hazy 
presentment  of  the  profound  difference  between  physical 
truths  and  the  so-called  truths  of  mathematics. 

In  conclusion,  until  for  the  third  of  my  three  points  we 
can  discover  much  more  obvious  "  sources  "  than  those  sug- 
gested up  till  now,  I  shall  see  no  cause  to  modify  my  verdict 
upon  the  originality  of  Vico's  conception  of  mathematics. 
This  originality  is  further  proved  by  the  important  conse- 
quences drawn  by  Vico  from  his  theory  of  mathematics  for 
his  philosophical  method  ;  for  every  one  knows  that  a  thought 
taken  over  bodily  from  another  remains  inert  and  sterile, 
while  an  original  idea  is  always  active  and  fruitful. 

Note. — I  have  selected,  of  the  various  criticisms  directed 
against  my  book  on  Vico,  that  concerning  his  "  originality," 
because  this  gave  me  opportunities  for  researches  and  explana- 
tions of  some  value.  But  my  book  has  been  subjected  to  two 
general  criticisms  which  do  not  lend  themselves  to  the  same 
treatment. 

It  has  been  said  that  in  my  exposition  of  Vico's  philosophy 

1  Op.  cit.  p.  33.  *  Op,  cit.  p.  66. 


300      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

I  have  followed  my  personal  philosophical  convictions  :  and 
sermons  and  epistles  have  been  showered  upon  me  preaching 
the  duty  of  casting  off  prejudices,  etc.,  and  narrating  the 
history  of  philosophy  in  an  objective  manner,  etc.  But  I 
should  like  my  critics  to  believe  that  my  "  convictions  " 
cannot  have,  to  my  mind,  the  character  of  prejudices,  but 
precisely  that  of  liberation  from  prejudice,  which  is  what 
they  demand  :  that  detachment  and  purity  of  understanding 
which  is  necessary  for  the  comprehension  of  historical  facts, 
and  is  not,  as  some  fancy,  a  primeval  innocence,  but  the  fruit 
of  laborious  cultivation.  To  grasp  Vico  historically  in  his 
strict  reality  I  have  been  compelled  to  undergo  a  catharsis 
of  prejudices,  consisting  in  my  case  of  the  philosophy  to  which 
my  own  efforts  had  led  me.  My  ideas  may  be  untrue,  but 
that  is  another  question ;  and  that  means  that  if  their  falsity 
is  proved  I  am  bound  to  clear  and  purify  my  mind  by  means 
of  less  false  ideas ;  but  these  in  their  turn  must  always  be  ideas 
and  become  convictions.  In  point  of  abstract  method,  no 
objection  at  all  can  be  made  to  any  one  who  looks  at  Vico 
through  the  spectacles  of  scholasticism  if  he  thinks  they  make 
his  sight  more  distinct  and  penetrating  ;  the  most  we  can  do 
is  to  try  and  persuade  him  that  there  are  better  spectacles 
on  the  market.  But  we  certainly  have  the  right  to  smile  if 
this  same  scholastic  goes  on  to  warn  us  that  "  in  studying  a 
philosopher,  in  investigating  and  reconstructing  his  thought, 
it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  bring  to  the  task  a  mind  free  from 
preconceptions  and  hostile  to  prejudices  "  ;  while  all  the 
time  he  is  trying  to  pass  off  his  scholastic  opinions  and  religious 
beliefs  under  the  banner  of  objectivity,  sincerity  and  freedom 
from  prejudice.  "  Philosophers  " — I  have  seen  this  assertion 
too — "  are  unfitted  for  writing  the  history  of  philosophy, 
because  they  have  ideas  of  their  own."  And  who  is  fitted  for 
it  ?  People  who  are  not  philosophers  ?  Does  not  Vico  teach 
us  precisely  this,  that  where  he  who  makes  the  facts  (as 
the  philosopher  makes  philosophy)  himself  narrates  them, 
there  history  reaches  its  highest  certainty  ? 

The  other  criticism  concerns  the  idealistic  interpretation 
which  I  have  given  to  some  of  Vico's  doctrines.  It  is  con- 
tended that  Vico  was  a  Catholic,  and  that  fact  is  supposed  to 
prove  that  he  could  not  have  entertained  the  ideas  which  I 
find  in  his  works.  But  that  Vico  professed  himself  an  entirely 
orthodox  Catholic,  and  that  he  clung  to  Catholicism  with  all 
the  strength  and  zeal  of  his  mind  I  have  myself  said  again  and 


APPENDIX  III  301 

again  :  I  have  even  defended  him  against  the  accusations  or 
praises  dealt  out  to  him  by  other  critics  for  deceit  or  prudence 
in  his  attitude  to  the  Church.  But  is  it  really  so  amazing, 
so  unheard-of  a  thing,  to  find  heterodox  ideas  in  an  orthodox 
writer  ?  Are  they  not  found  in  the  Early  Fathers  and  the 
Schoolmen,  in  mediaeval  and  modern  theologians  and  mystics  ? 
To  take  an  example  of  the  many  that  occur,  an  example  for 
a  double  reason  above  suspicion  :  Nicholas  of  Cusa  was  a 
Catholic  and  in  fact  a  Cardinal  of  Holy  Church,  and  in  his 
lifetime  the  intimate  friend  of  three  popes.  And  yet  the 
Catholic  historian  of  Scholasticism,  De  Wulf,  wrote  of  him 
"  Le  Cardinal  catholique  est-il  done  pantheiste  ?  ...  II  s'en 
defend  vivement  dans  son  Apologia  doctae  ignorantiae,  mais 
on  peut  dire  de  lui  comme  d'Eckehart :  '  il  fait  flechir  la  logique 
au  profit  de  son  orthodoxie  et  retient  de  force  les  consequences 
de  ses  premisses'"  (Hist,  de  la  philos.  m&dievale,  p.  389).  If 
this  happened  to  the  Cardinal  of  Cusa  or  the  Franciscan  Master 
Eckehart,  could  it  not  happen  to  the  Catholic  Vico  ?  M.  de 
Wulf  the  Catholic  historian  is  allowed  to  use  this  admirable 
method  of  criticism  and  to  distinguish  intention  and  action, 
will  and  logic.  Why  should  it  be  denied  to  me  ? 
But  enough. 


APPENDIX   IV 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 

I.  WORKS  OF  VICO 

Vice's  earliest  extant  work  is  the  poem  entitled  Feelings  of 
one  in  despair,  composed  certainly  before  the  author's  twenty- 
fifth  year  at  Vatolla  in  the  Cilento,  where  he  lived  for  nine 
years  as  a  tutor  at  the  Casa  Rocca,  printed  by  Gonzatti  at 
Venice  and  dated  1693.  This  was  followed  by  verses  and 
speeches  of  a  merely  rhetorical  character. 

The  philosophical  characteristics  are  accentuated  in  the 
six  speeches  read  by  Vico  at  Naples  University,  1699-1707, 
not  printed  by  him,  and  rediscovered  and  published  by 
Galasso  (Naples,  Morano,  1869).  In  these  speeches,  though 
some  tendencies  of  his  thought  show  themselves,  his  philo- 
sophy is  still  the  traditional  system,  not  without  some  traces 
of  Cartesianism.  Vico's  opposition  to  Cartesianism  and 
formal  adoption  of  his  own  views  are  announced  for  the  first 
time  in  the  inaugural  lecture  for  the  year  1708,  entitled  De 
nostri  temporis  studiorum  ratione,  published  next  year  by 
the  author  himself  (Naples,  Mosca,  1709).  A  long  digression 
(§§  12-15)  contains  a  sketch  of  the  history  of  Roman  juris- 
prudence, his  first  essay  in  the  historical  studies  which  led 
later  on  to  the  Diritto  universale  and  the  two  Scienze  Nuove. 

The  following  year  appeared  Vico's  first  constructively 
philosophical  and  historical  work :  the  De  antiquissima 
Italorum  sapientia  ex  linguae  Latinae  originibus  eruenda,  or 
rather  the  first  book  of  that  work  (Naples,  Mosca,  1710)  : 
the  other  two  were  never  written,  but  we  can  form  an  idea  of 
their  intended  contents  from  what  is  said  in  the  Autobiography. 
Beside  Vico's  theory  of  knowledge  in  its  first  form  and  the 
metaphysic  which  he  always  maintained  in  its  entirety,  the 
De  antiquissima  contained  an  attempt  to  reconstitute  for  the 

302 


APPENDIX  IV  303 

first  time  primitive  wisdom,  or  rather  one  particular  instance 
of  primitive  wisdom,  that  of  Italy ;  but  as  we  have  already 
said  in  the  text  of  our  exposition  the  attempt  was  founded  on 
the  idea  that  this  wisdom  was  philosophical,  and  conducted 
according  to  the  criterion  of  the  transmission  of  culture  which 
Vico  subsequently  rejected,  as  he  rejected  the  traditional 
opinion,  accepted  in  this  work,  of  the  Athenian  origin  of  the 
laws  of  the  Twelve  Tables.  We  must  accordingly  refuse  to 
accept  Cantoni's  verdict  (G.  B.  Vico,  p.  38)  that  the  De  anti- 
quissima  forms  "  a  strange  anomaly  in  the  history  of  Vico's 
thought,  being  contrary  to  his  whole  scientific  life,  his 
tendencies,  his  principles,  and  the  method  which  later  he 
almost  universally  applies  in  his  historical  researches."  The 
reverse  is  in  fact  the  case  :  namely  that  this  work  is  the 
starting-point  of  his  future  developments  and  that  without  it 
we  cannot  understand  his  later  thought. 

The  criticisms  directed  by  the  Giornale  del  letterati  d'  Italia 
(1711,  vols.  v.  and  viii.)  against  the  historical  and  some  of 
the  philosophical  positions  of  the  De  antiquissima  evoked 
Vico's  two  important  Replies  (Naples,  Mosca,  1711  and  1712) 
in  which  he  defends  and  elucidates  his  views  on  the  theory  of 
knowledge  and  metaphysics.  The  part  of  the  De  antiquissima 
that  never  went  to  the  press  included  his  meditations  on  the 
philosophy  of  medicine,  from  which  he  extracted  an  essay 
De  aequilibrio  corporis  animantis  :  this  he  thought  of  publish- 
ing many  years  later,  but  it  is  now  lost.  Of  these  studies, 
therefore,  as  of  his  speculations  upon  physics  intended  to 
constitute  a  Liber  physicus,  we  know  only  what  he  tells  us 
in  his  autobiography. 

Setting  aside  his  rhetorical  and  occasional  compositions, 
the  largest  of  which  is  the  De  rebus  gestis  Antonii  Caraphaei 
(Naples,  Mosca,  1716),  the  continuation  of  his  thought,  now 
concentrating  upon  moral  and  historical  problems,  is  sketched 
in  a  lecture  of  1719  (of  which  an  abstract  is  included  in  the 
autobiography)  and  developed  first  in  1720  in  a  printed 
prospectus  of  four  double -columned  pages  known  as  the 
Sinopsi  del  diritto  universale,  and  secondly  in  the  vast  treatise, 
De  universi  iuris  uno  principio  et  fine  uno  liber  unus  (Naples, 
Mosca,  1720)  completed  next  year  with  the  Liber  alter  qui  est 
de  constantia  iurisprudentis,  and  supplemented  in  1722  by  the 
Notae  in  duos  libros,  etc.  (same  publisher)  ;  a  work  which  is 
usually  referred  to  briefly  following  the  author's  example 
as  the  Diritto  universale. 


304      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA  TTISTA   VICO 

This  book,  according  to  Cantoni  (op.  cit.  p.  243)  represents 
the  culminating  point  of  Vice's  scientific  activity.  The 
verdict  is  no  more  acceptable  than  that  quoted  above.  The 
author  (Opp.  v.  10-11)  rejected  the  Diritto  universale  because 
he  seemed  to  find  persisting  there  the  prejudice  and  the 
pretence  of  "  descending  "  from  the  thought  of  Plato  and 
other  philosophers  to  that  of  primitive  man,  a  tendency  which 
led  him  astray  "  in  certain  matters  "  ;  but  he  also  calls  it,  and 
rightly,  a  "  sketch  for  the  Scienza  Nuova,"  which  it  really  is. 
The  ideas  about  poetry  are  here  still  confused,  Homer  is  not 
yet  a  myth,  the  mythological  canons  have  less  unity  than  they 
acquired  later,  the  theory  of  reflux  is  only  faintly  adumbrated, 
and  in  a  word  both  the  ideal  eternal  history  and  the  theory  of 
knowledge  upon  which  it  is  founded  are  as  yet  immature. 
The  book  is  all  contained,  under  a  new  form,  in  his  later  work, 
except  the  general  ethical  and  juridical  philosophy,  which 
is  not  highly  original,  and  some  historical  developments 
which  are  merely  alluded  to  in  the  later  writings. 

The  MS.  of  an  Italian  work  in  two  books,  in  which  Vico 
expounded  his  doctrines  "  by  a  negative  method,"  has  been 
lost.  But  he  expounds  them  positively  and  at  less  length  in 
the  Principl  di  una  Scienza  Nuova  intorno  alia  comune  natura 
delle  nazioni,  per  la  quale  si  ritrovano  i  principl  di  altro  sistema 
del  diritto  naturale  delle  genii  (Naples,  Mosca,  1725)  which  is 
known  by  the  title  (again  authorised  by  himself)  of  First 
Scienza  Nuova. 

In  1725,  the  year  of  the  publication  of  the  first  Scienza 
Nuova,  Vico  related  the  history  of  his  studies  :  Vita  di  G.  B. 
Vico  scritta  da  se  medesimo,  which  was  inserted  in  Calogera's 
Raccolta  di  opuscoli  scientifici  e  filologici  (Venice,  Zani,  1728, 
vol.  i.  pp.  145-256).  Among  the  minor  writings  of  this  period 
may  be  noted  the  two  speeches  on  the  death  of  the  Countess  of 
Althann  (1724)  and  the  Marchesana  della  Petrella  Angiola 
Cimini  (1727)  ;  the  little  volume  Vici  vindiciae  (Naples, 
Mosca,  1729)  containing  a  personal  defence  (together  with 
an  important  theoretical  digression  on  "  laughter  ")  against 
a  malevolent  notice  inserted  in  the  Ada  Lipsiensia  of  1727, 
about  the  Scienza  Nuova',  and  some  fine  letters  to  Giacchi, 
Degli  Angioli,  Esperti,  De  Vitry  and  Solla  on  the  contrast 
between  his  works  and  the  state  of  learning  at  this  time. 

To  the  first  Scienza  Nuova  Vico  thought  of  adding  a  long 
series  of  Annotations  in  a  reprint  of  it  which  he  was  preparing 
at  Venice  between  1728  and  1730.  But  since  this  scheme  was 


APPENDIX  IV  jos 

not  carried  out,  and  on  the  other  hand  he  was  dissatisfied 
with  the  book  not  so  much  on  account  of  the  matter,  he  says, 
as  on  account  of  the  arrangement  (Opp.  vi.  u),  he  resolved  to 
publish  an  entirely  new  exposition  of  his  doctrines  in  the  Cinque 
libri  de'  principl  di  una  Scienza  Nuova  d'  intorno  alia  comune 
natura  delle  nazioni,  in  questa  seconda  impressione  con  piu  propia 
maniera  condotti  e  di  motto  accresciuti  (Naples,  Mosca,  1730), 
which  form  the  second  Scienza  Nuova.  While  Cantoni  (op. 
cit.  pp.  238-9)  considers  this  work  the  dotage  of  Vice's 
thought,  it  is  really  the  necessary  result  and  perfect  form  in 
which  his  previous  attempts  issued ;  it  is  the  book  which 
with  the  De  antiquissima  and  the  autobiography  supplies  all 
the  necessary  material  for  a  knowledge  of  his  thought.  In 
the  Diritto  universale  and  the  first  Scienza  Nuova  we  can  find 
a  few  details  omitted  in  the  later  work ;  but  those  treatises 
display  the  same  doctrines  as  the  second  Scienza  Nuova  in  a 
manner  much  less  profound  and  solid,  and  certainly  less 
characteristic  of  the  author.  The  detailed  comparison  of 
these  three  works  has  been  made  with  great  care  in  the  short 
summaries  added  by  Ferrari  to  his  editions  of  the  first  and 
second  Scienza  Nuova. 

Even  the  1730  edition  was  increased  by  the  author  from 
1731  to  about  1740  by  many  variations  and  additions,  though 
without  changing  the  arrangement  or  the  substance  of  the 
work.  These  additions  were  taken  for  the  most  part  incor- 
porated in  a  final  MS.  on  which  was  based  the  edition  of  the 
Principl  di  una  Scienza  Nuova  intorno  alia  comune  natura 
delle  nazioni,  published  the  very  year  of  Vico's  death  (Naples, 
Stamperia  Muziana,  1744).  In  the  National  Library  at 
Naples  are  preserved  the  autographs  both  of  this  MS.  and  of 
two  earlier  MSS.  of  additions  and  corrections,  unpublished 
fragments  of  which  have  been  published  by  Giordano  (Naples, 
1818)  and  Del  Giudice  (Naples,  1862).  All  the  unpublished 
fragments  and  variants  have  been  now  collected  by  Nicolini 
in  the  edition  hereafter  mentioned  (p.  307). 

After  the  second  Scienza  Nuova  Vico  wrote  hardly  anything. 
We  may  note  among  these  few  productions  the  speech  De 
mente  heroica  (Naples,  1732),  the  addition  to  the  autobiography 
(1731),  and  a  few  sonnets  in  which,  composed  though  they 
were,  like  almost  all  his  verses,  by  request  and  as  occasional 
pieces,  a  personal  note  may  at  times  be  felt. 


306      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

II.  REPRINTS,  COLLECTIONS,  AND  TRANSLATIONS 

Two  collections  of  Vice's  minor  works  have  been  made,  one 
of  the  Latinae  orationes  alone  by  F.  Daniele  (Naples,  1766), 
and  the  other,  rich  in  unpublished  matter,  of  the  Italian  and 
Latin  Opuscoli,  in  four  volumes,  by  C.  A.  de  Rosa,  Marchese 
di  Villarosa  (Naples,  1818-23).  Vice's  son  Gennaro  furnished 
Villarosa  with  all  his  father's  extant  papers  ;  and  these  price- 
less autographs  are  still  preserved  at  Naples  in  the  house  of 
my  intimate  friends  the  engineers  Tommaso  and  Vincenzo  de 
Rosa  di  Villarosa. 

The  first  and  only  edition  as  it  may  be  called,  since  all 
others  are  merely  reproductions  of  it,  of  Vice's  complete  works 
is  that  of  Giuseppe  Ferrari,  in  six  volumes  (Milan,  Classici 
italiani,  1835-37)  reprinted  with  improvements  in  1852-54. 
The  Opere  edited  by  N.  M.  Corcia  (Naples,  Tipografia  della 
Sibilla,  1834,  2  vols.)  are  only  a  selection  ;  and  the  Opere  edited 
by  F.  Predari  (Milan,  Bravetta,  1835)  never  went  beyond 
one  ill-arranged  volume.  The  edition  which  followed  that 
of  Ferrari  (Naples,  lovane,  1840-41)  is  also  incomplete  and  ill- 
arranged,  but  contains  some  small  unpublished  works.  The 
Neapolitan  edition  of  the  Opere  in  eight  volumes  (i.-ii.  1858, 
iii.  1861,  iv.  1859,  v.-vi.  1860,  vii.  1865,  viii.  1869,  the 
earlier  volumes  at  the  Tipografia  dei  Classici  Italiani,  the 
others  by  the  publisher  Morano)  is  based  mainly  upon  Ferrari, 
but  somewhat  incorrect ;  it  is  however  the  most  complete 
of  all,  as  containing  the  Sinopsi,  the  Istituzioni  oratorie,  and 
the  Orazioni  latine  published  by  Galasso  subsequently  to 
Ferrari's  edition,  as  well  as  the  Italian  translations  by  the 
advocate  F.  S.  Pomodoro  of  the  De  ratione,  De  antiquissima, 
and  Diritto  universale. 

Unpublished  or  scattered  works  of  Vico  not  appearing  in 
any  of  these  editions  have  been  collected  by  Croce,  Bibliografia 
vichiana  and  Prime  and  Secondo  supplement  :  see  below. 

A  critical  edition  of  the  second  Scienza  Nuova  is  now  being 
printed  in  the  CoUezione  dei  dassici  detta  filosofia  modernadiretta 
da  B.  Croce  e  G.  Gentile  (Bari,  Laterza) :  the  first  volume  is  to 
be  published  at  the  same  time  as  the  present  monograph.1 
It  is  being  edited  by  Dr.  Fausto  Nicolini,  who  by  using  the 
autograph  MSS.  has  enriched  Ferrari's  edition,  which  contained 
the  fragments  suppressed  in  the  1730  issue,  by  all  the  frag- 

1  By  now  (1913)  the  second  volume  has  appeared :  the  third  will 
appear  next  year. 


APPENDIX  IV  307 

ments  of  the  intermediate  redactions  down  to  the  1744  text ; 
Vice's  quotations  have  been  checked  and  references  given  in 
notes  to  the  passages  of  classical  and  modern  authors  to 
which  he  refers  ;  and,  finally,  in  deference  to  a  wish  often 
expressed  by  men  of  letters  as  authoritative  as  Tommaseo, 
the  orthography  and  punctuation  have  been  corrected. 
Ferrari's  valuable  summaries  are  reproduced,  with  a  few 
emendations,  in  Nicolini's  edition. 

Nicolini  is  also  at  work  on  a  new  edition  of  the  complete 
works,  to  form  part  of  Laterza's  collection  of  Scrittori  d'  Italia, 
the  scheme  and  detailed  index  of  which  may  be  seen  in  Croce, 
Secondo  supplemento  alia  Bibliografia  vichiana  (pp.  102-13). 
The  fifth  volume  of  this  collection,  edited  by  Croce,  is  also  to 
appear  with  the  present  monograph. 

Vico's  Latin  works  have  frequently  been  translated  into 
Italian :  the  De  antiquissima  anonymously,  perhaps  by 
Vincenzo  Monti  (1816),  and  later  by  Sarchi  (1870)  :  the  first 
book  of  the  Diritto  naturale  by  Corcia  (1839),  Amante  (1841), 
Giani  (1855),  and  Sarchi  (1866),  and  both  books,  with  the 
De  ratione  and  De  antiquissima,  as  we  have  said,  by  Pomodoro. 

The  second  Scienza  Nuova  was  translated  into  French, 
much  abbreviated,  by  Jules  Michelet,  under  the  title  of 
Principes  de  la  philosophic  de  I'histoire  (Paris,  Renouard,  1827) 
and  frequently  reprinted  ;  and  again,  in  full,  by  an  anonymous 
translator  described  as  "  1'Auteur  de  1'Essai  sur  la  formation 
du  dogme  catholique,"  in  reality  Cristina  Trivulzi,  Princess  of 
Belgioioso  (Paris,  Renouard,  1844).  Michelet  also  translated 
some  of  Vico's  minor  works,  published  with  the  Scienza  Nuova 
in  the  edition  of  the  (Euvres  choisies  de  Vico  (Paris,  Hachette, 
1835)  and  frequently  reprinted. 

In  German  there  is  a  translation  in  full  with  good  notes 
by  W.  E.  Weber  (Leipzig,  Brockhaus,  1844).  There  is  also 
a  summary  of  the  first  book  of  the  Diritto  universale  by  K.  H. 
Mtiller,  forming  the  first  volume  of  a  series  of  Vico's  Kleine 
Schriften  which  was  not  continued  (Neubrandenburg,  Briinslow, 

1854). 

The  only  English  translation  is  a  version  of  the  book  on 
Homer  based  on  Michelet's  French  translation  and  inserted  in 
H.  Nelson  Coleridge's  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Greek 
Classic  Poets  (3rd  ed.,  London,  Murray,  1846). 


308      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA  VICO 

III.  BIOGRAPHY  OF  VICO 

By  way  of  supplement  to  the  autobiography,  Villarosa 
collected  information  on  Vice's  last  years  and  published  it  as 
a  continuation  of  that  work  in  his  edition  of  the  Opuscoli, 
vol.  i.  (1818). 

This  supplement,  together  with  everything  else  that  has 
been  published  in  the  way  of  documents  or  contemporary 
records  of  Vico,  may  be  found  collected  in  the  fifth  volume 
of  the  new  edition  of  his  works  above  mentioned  (p.  307)  and 
entitled  :  L'  Autobiografia,  U  carteggio  e  le  poesie  varie,  ed.  B. 
Croce  (Ban,  Laterza,  1911). 

IV.  LITERATURE  ON  VICO 

There  are  only  three  monographs  on  Vico  which  may  still  be 
read  with  profit  (that  of  Ferrari,  La  Mente  dd  Vico,  admirable 
editor  though  he  was,  may  best  be  consigned  to  merciful 
oblivion) ;  they  are  as  follows : — 

1.  Carlo    Cantoni,    G.B.V.,    studl    critici    e    comparativi 
(Turin,  Civelli,  1867).    Cf.  for  certain  reservations  A.  Faggi, 
in  Rivista  fUosofica  italiana,  vol.  ix.,  1906,  pp.  593-606,  and 
G.  Gentile,  in  Critica,  vol.  v.,  1907,  pp.  197-201. 

2.  Karl  Werner,  G.B.V.  als  Philosoph  und  gelehrter  Forscher, 
(Wien,  Braumuller,  1881).    Cf.  Zeitschrift  fur  PhUosophie  und 
philos.  Kritik,  vol.  Ixxii.,  1883,  pp.  139-52. 

3.  Robert   Flint,    Vico   (Edinburgh   and  London,    1884). 
Italian  translation  by  F.  Finocchietti,  Florence,  1888). 

See  what  has  been  said  of  these  above,  p.  277.  Of  short 
and  general  studies  the  following  are  the  best : — 

1.  B.  Spaventa,  G.B.V. ,  in  Prolusione  e  introduzione  alle 
lezioni  di  filosofia  (Naples,  Vitale,  1862),  pp.  83-102,  reprinted 
under  the  title  La  Filosofia  italiana  nelle  sue  rdazioni  con  la 
filosofia  europea,  ed.  G.  Gentile  (Ban,  Laterza,  1908) ;    see 
pp.  111-35  °f  this  reprint. 

2.  F.  de  Sanctis,  Storia  della  letteratura  italiana  (Naples, 
Morano,  1870 ;  new  ed.  Croce,  Ban,  Laterza,  1912),  vol.  ii.  pp. 
342-62. 

3.  F.  Florentine,  Lettere sopra la  "  Scienza Nuova"  (Florence, 
1865),  reprinted  in  Scritti  varl  (Naples,  Morano,  1871),  pp. 
161-211. 

4.  E.  Cauer,  G.B.V.  und  seine  Stellung  zur  modernen  Wissen- 
schaft  (in  Deutsches  Museum,  edited  by  R.  Prutz  and  W. 
Woelfsohn,  Leipzig,  Hinrichs,  year  i,  1851,  vol.  i.  pp.  249-65). 


APPENDIX  IV  309 

For  special  points  the  following  may  be  consulted : — 

1.  F.  A.  Wolf,  G.B.V.  iiber  den   Homer  (in  Museum  der 
Alterthumswissenschaft,  Berlin,  1807,  vol.  ii.  pp.  555-70). 

2.  J.  K.  von  Orelli,  Vico  und  Niebuhr  (in  Schweizerisches 
Museum,  Aarau,  vol.  i.  p.  184  sqq.). 

3.  C.  lannelli,  Sulla  natura  e  necessita  delta  scienza  delle  cose 
e  delle  storie  umane  (Naples,  Porcelli,  1818,  and  Milan,  Fontana, 
1832). 

4.  Emerico  Amari,  Critica  di  una  scienza  della  legislazione 
comparata  (Genoa,  Istituto  dei  Sordomuti,  1857).    Cf.  on  this 
book  K.  Werner,  E.A.  in  seinem  Verhdltnis  zu  G.B.V.  (Wien, 
1880  ;  from  the  Sitzungsberichte  der  phil.-histor.  Klasse  of  the 
Imperial  Academy  of  Vienna,  vol.  xcvi.). 

5.  F.  Acri,  Teoria  del  V.  intorno  alle  idee  o  paradimmi  (in 
Abbozzo  diuna  teoria  delle  idee,  Palermo,  Lao,  1870  ;  and  with 
modifications  in  the  volume  Videbimus  in  aenigmate,  Bologna, 
Mareggiani,  1907,  pp.  287-313). 

6.  E.  Cenni,  an  exposition  of  Vice's  metaphysic  in  the 
volume  entitled  Consider azioni  sulT  Italia  ad  occasione  del 
traforo  del  Gottardo  (Florence,  Cellini,  1884),  pp.  109-82. 

7.  E.  Bouvy,  De  V.  Cartesii  adversaria  (Paris,  Hachette, 
1889). 

8.  E.  Bouvy,  La  Critique  dantesque  au  dix-huitieme  siecle  : 
Dante  et  V.  (Paris,  Leroux,  1892). 

9.  G.  Sorel,  £tude  sur  V.  (in  Devenir  social,  Paris,  vol.  ii., 
1896)  and  see  esp.  the  same  author's  Le  Systeme  historique 
de  Renan  (Paris,  Jacques,  1905),  passim. 

10.  B.  Labanca,  G.B.V.  e  i  suoi  critici  cattolici  (Naples, 
Pierro,  1898). 

11.  G.  Rossi,  V.  nei  tempi  di  V.  (in  Rivista  filosofica  italiana, 
vol.  ii.,  1899,  pp.  294-319,  and  part  2,  ibid.  vol.  x.,  1907,  pp. 
602-34). 

12.  A.  Olivieri,  Gli  studi  omerici  di  G.B.V.  (in  Atti  della 
r.  Accad.  di  archeologia,  lettere  e  belle  arti,  Naples,  vol.  xxiv., 

1905). 

13.  C.  Trabalza,  Storia  della  grammatica  italiana  (Milan, 
Hoepli,  1908),  ch.  xii.  pp.  364-76. 

14.  P.  Garofalo,  Acrisia  vichiana  nella  "  Scienza  Nuova," 
critical  annotations  (Naples,  Detken,  1909)  :   cf.  F.  Nicolini, 
in  Critica,  vol.  viii.,  1910,  pp.  374-8. 

15.  G.    Maugain,    £tude    sur    Involution    intellectuelle    de 
I'ltalie  de  1657  a  1750  environ  (Paris,  Hachette,  1909). 

16.  On  my  own  previous  work  upon  Vico,  it  should  be 


3io      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

observed  that  the  materials  of  the  chapter  on  Vico's  aesthetic 
doctrine  in  Croce,  Estetica  (4th  ed.,  Ban,  Laterza,  1912,  ch.  v. 
pp.  255-71),  have  been  worked  up  in  a  more  mature  form  into 
ch.  iv.  of  the  present  monograph  :  the  essay  on  Vico's  Ethics 
(in  Critica,  vi.,  1908,  pp.  71-7)  has  been  absorbed  into  chaps, 
vi.-viii. ;  and  similarly  that  on  the  Lineamenti  di  storia 
letteraria  in  G.B.V.  (ibid.  pp.  460-80)  into  chaps,  xvi.  and  xviii. ; 
my  other  scattered  writings  have  in  general  been  only  of 
technical,  philological,  or  polemical  interest.  In  the  mis- 
cellaneous Studi  in  onore  di  F.  Torraca  (Naples,  Perrella,  1912) 
is  a  short  essay  by  me  upon  La  Dottrina  del  riso  e  dell'  ironia 
in  G.B.V. 

The  whole  of  the  literature  on  Vico,  together  with  extracts 
from  rare  books,  minor  works,  and  articles,  and  with  unpublished 
documents  together  with  fully  detailed  notes  on  the  editions 
of  Vico's  writings,  is  collected  in  the  three  works  to  which  I 
have  frequently  referred,  namely :  B.  Croce,  Bibliografia 
vichiana  contenente  nella  parte  I  il  catalogo  delle  edizioni, 
traduzioni  e  manoscritti  delle  opere  di  G.B.V.  ;  nella  parte  II, 
quello  dei  giudizl  e  lavori  storico-critici  intorno  al  V.  sino  al- 
l'  anno  corrente  ;  nella  parte  III  letter  e  inedite  del  V.  e  al  V., 
documenti  e  altri  scritti  inediti  o  rari,  e  varie  appendici  illus- 
trative (Naples,  1904  :  reprinted  from  Atti  dell'  Accademia 
pontaniana,  Naples,  vol.  xxxiv. ;  pp.  xii.  127,  4to)  ;  — 
Supplemento  alia  Bibliografia  vichiana  (Naples,  1907  ;  reprinted 
from  Atti,  vol.  xxxvii.  pp.  34,  4to) — and  Secondo  Supplemento 
(Naples,  1911,  reprinted  from  Atti,  vol.  xl.  pp.  116,  4to)  ;  the 
whole  collected  in  one  volume  under  the  title  :  Bibliografia 
vichiana  ;  raccolta  di  tre  memorie  presentate  all'  Accademia 
pontaniana  di  Napoli  nel  1903,  1907  e  1910,  with  an  appendix 
by  F.  Nicolini  (Bari,  Laterza,  1911). 1 

1  Since  the  publication  of  the  Italian  edition  of  this  work  in  1911 
several  studies  of  Vico  have  appeared.  The  following  may  be  noted : — 

G.  Gentile,  La  Prima  Fase  della filosofia  di  G.B.V.,  Naples,  1912  (in 
the  Studi  in  onore  di  F.  Torraca),  quoted  supra,  p.  287  n. 

F.  Pessico,  Ripensando  la  Scienza  Nuova  (in  Rassegna  nazionale, 
November  i,  1912). 

G.  Folchieri,  77  Carattere  dell'  opera  di  G.B.V.  (Perugia, Bartelli,i9i3). 
F.  Nicolini,  Spigolature  vichiane  ;  sul  testo  delle  Vindiciae  (in  Scritti 

varl  in  onore  di  R.  Renier,  Turin,  1912). 

B.  Croce,  II  V.  e  la  critica  omerica  (in  the  volume  Saggio  sullo  Hegel  e 
altri  scritti  di  storia  della  filosofia,  Bari,  Laterza,  1913,  pp.  269-282). 

Cf.  also  W.  Windelband,  Die  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophie,  5th 
ed.  Leipzig,  1911,  vol.  i.  pp.  597-8. 


NOTE 

PASSAGES  OF  VICO'S  WORKS  TO  WHICH   ESPECIAL  REFERENCE 
IS  MADE  IN  THE  COURSE  OF  THE  EXPOSITION 

CHAPTER  I. — For  this  chapter  see  the  De  ratione,  the  De 
antiquissima,  the  two  Riposte  al  Giornale  dei  letterati,  and  the 
first  part  of  the  Autobiography.  For  the  note  (p.  8)  on  the 
spirit  of  the  Reformation,  see  Opere,  ed.  Ferrari,  2nd  ed.  vi.  5. 

Chapter  II.—Opp.  v.  147,  239, 136-7,  51 ;  iv.  33 ;  v.  50-51, 
147  ;  iv.  33,  63-4 ;  iii.  200 ;  v.  17,  97,  103,  149-50,  174 ;  iv. 
20,  248  ;  iii.  232  ;  iv.  20  ;  v.  562. 

Chapter  III.— Opp.  v.  147,  162,  99,  42  ;  iv.  73,  81,  174-5  ; 
v.  91,  145. 

Chapter  IV. — Opp.  v.  141,  166, 42  ;  iii.  232,  272-3  ;  iv.  20  ; 
v.  175,  259,  107 ;  iv.  22,  33  ;  v.  180,  441,  209-10,  201 ;  iv. 
205,  206 ;  iii.  274,  275  ;  v.  230,  211,  169  ;  iv.  201,  233,  365  ; 
v.  55,  82,  187, 196-7  ;  iv.  224  ;  v.  no,  112, 168,  212,  237,  217, 
379,  440,  212,  238  ;  iv.  24. 

Chapter  V. — Opp.  v.  80-81;  iv.  20, 21, 74  ;  v.  169;  v.  161-7; 
iv.  191-3, 168-9  ;  v.  18  ;  iv.  169,  50-51 ;  iii.  26,  no  ;  ii.  96-7  ; 
v.  166,  43,  169,  420-21,  387,  192,  379,  108. 

Chapter  VL— Opp.  v.  437,  18  ;  iv.  165  ;  v.  109,  no,  534  ; 
vi.  15  ;  v.  532  ;  iii.  12  ;  v.  106  ;  v.  49  ;  iv.  343  ;  vi.  127  ;  iii. 
30 ;  iv.  87 ;  iii.  57  ;  v.  490 ;  iv.  40-41 ;  iii.  30 ;  iv.  334 ;  iv.  35  ; 
iii.  12,  30  ;  v.  97  ;  iii.  234-40  ;  iv.  49  ;  v.  98,  131  ;  iv.  42-3. 

Chapter  VII. — Opp.  v.  142,  168, 173,  248,  250  ;  iv.  291 ;  v. 
106,  242, 142, 137-8,  290 ;  iv.  175-7,  42-3  ;  v.  153,  241 ;  iv.  9 ; 
v.  96,  242,  574  ;  iv.  332  ;  v.  97  ;  iv.  176-7,  43  ;  v.  176,  131. 

Chapter  VIII. — Opp.  iv.  309-13  ;  v.  185 ;  iii.  55,  28,  43-4  ; 
v.  97  ;  iii.  47-52,  52-3  ;  iv.  14,  45,  57  ;  v.  148,  133  ;  iii.  53, 
85-7.  58  ;  v.  240-41,  484  ;  iv.  170-71,  180,  351. 

Chapter  IX.— Opp.  v.  462-3,  544;  iv.  43-4,  46;  iii.  94, 
i92-3.85,  87;  iv.  18,335,  15;  v.  129-30,563,564;  iii.  55;  v. 
571 ;  iv.  245, 13, 159-60  ;  Scritti  inediti,  Del  Giudice,  pp.  11-14. 

3" 


312      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 

Chapter  X. — Opp.  v.  13-14,  128,  143-4,  172,  570  ;  iii.  22  ; 
iv.  42  ;  v.  97,  572,  45-6,  463. 

Chapter  XI.— Opp.  iv.  62  ;  v.  116, 183,  558, 559,  561,  570  ; 
vi.  127  ;  iii.  95  ;  iv.  249. 

Chapter  XII. — Same  sources  as  for  Ch.  I.  and  also  vi. 
105-6  ;  v.  524-5. 

Chapter  XIII. — Opp.  v.  60  ;  iii.  249  ;  v.  157,  167-70,  108  ; 
iii.  251-61 ;  iv.  17,  253  ;  v.  103,  217-18,  562  ;  Scritti  inediti, 
p.  9. 

Chapter  XIV.— Opp.  v.  94-6,  58,  79,  321,  63-4,  84-5,  96, 
93,  100 ;  iv.  2  7-8,  29-30,  97,  169,  200,  271 ;  v.  182-3,  61-4 ; 
iii.  230  ;  iv.  236-43,  184 ;  iii.  450-59  ;  v.  113,  115,  149,  211, 
59,  74,  100,  183  ;  iv.  75-6,  89  ;  v.  206  ;  iv.  99  ;  iii.  273  ;  v. 
260  ;  iii.  280  ;  v.  430-31,  202-3,  98-9. 

Chapter  XV.— Opp.  v.  356,  357,  255,  355,  121,  361-3,  363- 
365.  340.  34i»  253,  251-3,  259,  132,  118,  278,  311,  309,  307, 
118-19,  120,  121,  481,  484-6,  293-4,  246,  526,  528,  530-31, 
223-5,  444.  43,  H4-I5»  222-3,  46o,  220,  194,  191-3,  186, 
249,  369,  371,  372,  375,  382,  403,  69  ;  iv.  54,  83-4,  225-6. 

Chapter  XVI. — Opp.  v.  380-81,  422-5,  452,  277,  360-61, 
381,  426,  435-6,  465,  425,  427,  442,  427-32,  440-41,  445, 
448-9,  451,  455,  428-9,  445,  449-56,  445-6,  448,  452, 
378-81,  441-2,  453-4,  78,  446-7,  458-60,  433-4,  439; 
iv.  178  ;  vi.  46 ;  v.  100-101,  467-80,  381,  223-4,  457»  I00> 
102,  226,  438  ;  iv.  163,  25,  63,  200,  128  ;  iii.  295. 

Chapter  XVII.— Opp.  iv.  249-50,  228  ;  v.  183,  188  ;  iii. 
306-10;  iv.  93,  34,  155;  v.  86,  277,  322-3,  416,  129,  413- 
416,  81,  326,  86  ;  iii.  473  ;  v.  509-10,  102  ;  iii.  469-75,  87, 
122-3  >  iy-  67-71 ;  v.  123-4,  I9I»  ^5'  100,  88,  290-91,  310, 
496,  88-92, 123,  495-505,  502,  327,  525-30,  531,  534,  5o6,  474- 
476,  401,  551,  555,  514,  476,  515,  537-8,  122,  503,  521,  508, 
523,  503,  514. 

Chapter  XVIII.— Opp.  v.  550,  537,  259,  540-41,  546,  555- 
556 ;  iv.  loi,  545,  347-8,  552,  555,  544,  554,  537,  539,  538, 
551,  328,  547,  552,  512,  553,  550,  508-9,  68,  488,  547,  538-9, 
231,  233,  204,  222,  226,  361,  425,  428-39,  457 ;  iii.  357 ;  vi. 
37,  45-6  ;  iii.  270  ;  vi.  35,  37-8,  42,  48  ;  v.  429,  439  ;  iv.  198- 
200  ;  vi.  38  ;  v.  43,  226,  555,  544,  508-9,  557-8  ;  iv.  235-6,  71. 

Chapter  XIX. — For  this  chapter  see  the  De  ratione,  the 
first  pages  of  the  Autobiography  and  the  letters  to  Esperti,  De 
Vitry,  and  Solla.  On  wisdom  see  also  Opp.  v.  153. 


INDEX   OF  NAMES 


ABRAHAM, 147 

Achilles,  100,  125,  183  seqq. 

Acilius  Glabrio,  194 

Acquaviva,  M.,  138,  287 

Acri,  F.,  309 

Aelian,  176 

Aeneas,  198 

Aesop,  69 

Agamemnon,  170,  183 

Agis,  1 68 

Albertus  Magnus,  293,  294 

Alexander,  92,  125,  132,  212 

Amante,  E.,  307 

Amari,  E.,  309 

Amodeo,  248 

Andronicus,  Livius,  194 

Angelis  (de),  A.,  273 

Angelis  (de),  G.,  261 

Angioli  (degli),  304 

Antaeus,  179 

Archilochus,  177 

Ariosto,  222 

Aristarchus,  187 

Aristides,  90,  125,  132,  196 

Aristotle,  16,  35,  47,  50,  52,  69,  92,  96, 

167,  193,  256,  293-6 
Arnauld,  229 
Atlas,  157 
Augustine,  St.,  286 
Augustus,  209 

Baader,  274,  277,  279 

Bachhofen,  243 

Bacon,  15,  16,  25,  33.  35,  62,  74,  112, 

155 

Ballanche,  273 
Balmes,  276,  280,  282 
Balzac,  274 
Balzo  (del),  A.,  229 
Banier,  63 
Bartolo,  221 
Baumgarten,  47 
Bayle,  P.,  78,  87,  154,  234 


Berosus,  157 

Bertini,  280 

Biese,  277 

Bignon  (du),  269 

Bion,  194 

Boccaccio,  62,  131,  163,  223 

Bochart,  198 

Bockh,  A.,  274 

Bodin,  J.,  166,  218 

Boiardo,  222 

Bonamy,  269 

Bossuet,  117,  149 

Boulanger,  269 

Bouvy,  E.,  309 

Boyle,  R.,  138 

Brennus,  79 

Bruno  (Giordano),  72,  249.  275,  294 

Brutus  (Junius),  168,  171,  199 

Caesar,  125,  132 

Caligula,  125 

Campanella,  T.,  72,  94,  96,  123,  249, 

294 

Cantoni,  C.,  276,  303-4 
Capasso,  N.,  257,  259 
Capet  (Hugh),  218 
Caracalla,  212 
Carafa,  A.,  22,  250 
Cardano,  G.,  288,  291,  295 
Carducci,  248  n. 
Carneades,  78,  82 
Cassiodorus,  294 
Castelvetro,  52 
Cauer,  E.,  308 
Cenni,  E.,  275,  309 
Cesarotti,  270 
Chastellux,  269 
Chateaubriand,  164,  274 
Cicero,  73,  87,  176,  194,  202 
Cirillo,  N.,  259 
Cola  di  Rienzo,  223 
Colangelo,  F.,  272 
Coleridge,  Nelson,  307 


313 


314       THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBATTISTA   VICO 


Comte,  A.,  274 

Concina,  N.,  261 

Confucius,  180 

Confuorto,  248 

Conrad  III.,  221 

Constantine,  211 

Conti,  A.,  269 

Conti,  N.,  62 

Corcia,  N.  M.,  306-7 

Corneille,  232 

Cornelio,  T.,  289,  291,  295 

Coulanges,  Fustel  de,  243,  275 

Cournot,  274 

Cousin,  274 

Cristofaro  (G.  de),  248 

Croce,  B.,  306  seqq. 

Cujas,  216 

Cuoco,  V.,  130,  272 

Curiatii,  174 

Curius,  1 68 

Curtius,  168 

Cusa  (N.  of),  301 

Cyclic  poets,  192 

Dale  (van),  71 

Daniele,  F.,  306 

Dante,  150,  223-5,  242,  257,  275 

Darius,  51 

Decius,  1 68 

Degerando,  273 

Descartes,  1-35,  80,  137,  232,  238,  256, 

275,  290  seqq. 
Dio  Cassius,  202 
Diodorus  Siculus,  156,  202 
Dion  of  Syracuse,  226 
Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  201 
Domitian,  125 
Draco,  176,  180 
Dubois,  Cardinal,  233 
Duni,  269 

Eckehart,  301 
Eling,  Ingewald,  52 
Ennius,  194 
Epicureans,  87,  97 
Epicurus,  82,  101,  137 
Esperti,  304,  312 
Esteban,  E.,  261 
Euclid,  28 
Eusebius,  176 
Ezekiel,  92 

Fabius  Maximus,  205 
Fabricius,  168 
Faggi,  A.,  308 
Ferrari,  G.,  265,  305  seqq. 
Perron  (de),  274 


Fichte,  240 

Ficino,  M.,  138,  287,  291,  295 
Filangieri,  271,  272 
Finetti,  259,  271,  274 
Finocchietti,  F.,  308 
Fiorentino,  F.,  288,  308 
Flaubert,  253,  275 
Flint,  R.,  277,  308 
Folchieri,  G.,  310 
Fontenelle,  71,  154 
Foscolo,  170,  273 
Franck,  A.,  274 

Gaeta  (di),  M.,  260 

Galasso,  A.,  302,  306 

Galiani,  262 

Galen,  50 

Galileo,  14,  15,  138,  141,  283,  296-7 

Gambetta,  274 

Garofalo,  P.,  309 

Gassendi,  138 

Genovesi,  A.,  252,  262 

Gentile,  G.,  263  «.,  267,  287  n.,  306 

seqq. 

Gerning,  272 
Geulinx,  289 
Giacchi,  248,  260,  304 
Giani,  C.,  307 

Giannone,  P.,  121,  250,  284  n. 
Gioberti,  275 
Giordano,  165,  305 
Giudice  (del),  G.,  305,  311 
Giustiniani,  L.,  272 
Goethe,  viii,  271 
Gorgias,  177 
Gracchi,  205 
Grandi,  269 
Gravina,  31 
Grimm,  243 

Grotius,  22,  31,  46,  74,  82  seqq.,  249 
Gunther,  223 

Hadrian,  212 
Hamann,  239,  271 
Hannibal,  158 
Hecataeus,  189 
Hegel,  238  seqq.,  270,  274-5 
Heraclitus,  202 
Hercules,  65,  179 
Herder,  145,  239,  271,  277 
Hermodorus,  202 
Herodotus,  73,  158,  187 
Hesiod,  63 
Heyne,  239,  270 
Hobbes,  78,  87,  101 
Hoffding,  H.,  277 
Hoffmann,  234 


INDEX  OF  NAMES 


Hoffmannswaldau,  225 

Holbach  (d1),  277 

Homer,  64,  150,  162,  183  seqq.,  223, 

242,  270 

Horace,  177,  191,  192,  195 
Horatii,  174 
Huet,  D.,  63 
Humboldt,  239 
Hume,  239 

lamblichus,  50 
lannelli,  247,  273,  309 
Idanturas,  51 
Iphigenia,  170 

Jacobi,  271,  273,  279 

Jansenism,  98 

Jerome  (St.),  176 

Josephus,  93,  176 

Jouffroy,  274 

Jupiter  and  the  Twelve  Gods,  64,  147, 

1 60,  179 
Justinian,  98,  210,  221 

Kant,  238  seqq.,  267,  275,  280 
Kircher,  15 

Labanca,  B.,  272  «.,  309 

Lactantius,  93 

Laelius,  90 

Lami,  G.,  271 

Latius,  W.,  52 

Laurent,  274 

Laurenzano  (Duke  of),  252 

Leclerc,  J.,  63 

Leibniz,  31,  74,  141,  238,  243,  295 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  297 

Lenninier,  274 

Lex  Canuleia,  204 

Lex  Petelia,  195,  205 

Lex  Publilia,  195,  204 

Lipsius,  177 

Livy,  158,  162,  201 

Locke,  78,  8 1,  138,  295 

Lodovico,  262 

Lohenstein,  225 

Lomonaco,  F.,  272 

Longinus,  187,  195 

Lucretius,  137 

Lulle,  14 

Luzan,  I.,  262 

Lycurgus,  176 

Machiavelli,  35,  78,  81,  101,  123,  200, 

213 

Maffei,  151 
Malebranche,  8,  80,  140,  232,  289,  292 


Mallinkrot,  B.,  52 

Manlius,  168 

Manlius  Capitolinus,  168 

Manzoni,  273 

Marino  (cavalier),  225,  229 

Marx,  K.,  243 

Maugain,  G.,  309 

Mauthner,  F.,  277,  284  n. 

Mazzoni,  I.,  138,  287 

Menander,  193 

Mendelssohn,  277 

Menelaus,  174 

Mercurius  Trimegistus,  157,  180 

Merlin,  163 

Metastasio,  232,  259 

Michelet,  273,  307 

Mill,  J.  S.,  274 

Minos,  176 

Moliere,  232 

Mommsen,  243,  274 

Montesquieu,  269 

Monti,  V.,  272,  307 

Moreri,  234 

Moschus,  194 

Moses,  93,  147,  195-6 

Muller,  K.  H.,  243,  307 

Miiller,  O.,  239,  274 

Muratori,  80,  151,  273 

Naevius,  194 

Neal,  Th.,  280  «. 

Nero,  125 

Newton,  141,  261 

Nicole,  P.,  80 

Nicolini,  F.,  152,  305  seqq. 

Niebuhr,  243,  274 

Nietzsche,  F.,  243 

Nifo,  A.,  138,  287 

Noah,  147 

Numa  Pompilius,  92 

Occam,  William  of,  285,  291 

Oldenorp,  216 

Olivieri,  309 

Orelli,  274,  309 

Origen,  176 

Orpheus,  157,  180 

Otto  of  Freising,  286 

Pagano,  M.,  269,  272 
Paley,  277 
Pallavicino,  80 
Paoli  (Father),  259 
Papini,  G.,  285,  296 
Paris,  174 
Pascal,  80 
Pastore,  A.,  289 


316      THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GIAMBA TTISTA   VICO 


Patrizio,  F.,  52,  138,  287 

Paulus  Venetus,  229,  284 

Pessico,  F.,  310 

Petrarch,  151,  223 

Petrus  Hispanus,  284 

Photius,  234 

Piccolomini,  A.,  138,  287 

Pico  della  Mirandola,  138,  287 

Pindar,  192,  195 

Plato,  35,  46,  50,  52,  64,  74,  102,  105, 

123,  165,  180,  195,  198,  255,  287, 

304 

Plautus,  3 
Plotinus,  287 

Plutarch,  169,  187,  195,  200 
Polybius,  90,  123,  202 
Polyxena,  253 
Pomodoro,  F.  S.,  306 
Pomponius,  81 
Port  Royal,  229 
Predari,  F.,  306 
Priam,  253,  291 
Proclus,  14 

Publilius  Philo,  151,  204 
Puffendorf,  46,  75,  87  seqq. 
Pyrrhus,  160,  199 
Pythagoras,  92,  158,  198,  202 
Pythagoreans,  226 

Regillus,  194 

Regulus,  1 68 

Richard,  91 

Rinaldi,  192 

Rogadei,  G.  D.,  271 

Roland,  163 

Romano,  D.,  263,  269,  271 

Romulus,  102,  124,  162,  198,  218 

and  the  other  kings  of  Rome,  180 

Rosa  (de),  C.  A.,  see  Villarosa 
Rosmini,  275 
Rossi,  G.,  309 

Saint-fWemond,  154 

Salfi,  272 

Salvius  Julianus,  212 

Sanchez,  F.,  4,  286 

Sanchez,  F.  (the  Brocense),  46,  52 

Sanctis  (de),  F.,  243,  257,  275,  291, 

308 

Sarchi,  307 
Sarpi,  P.,  285,  296 
Savigny,  243,  274 
Scaevola,  Mucius,  168 
Scaevola,  Q.  Mucius  (jurist),  255 
Scaliger,  J.  C.,  46,  52,  151,  154 
Schelling,  277,  279 
Schopenhauer,  241 


Schopp,  G.,  46 

Scipio  Africanus,  90,  125,  132 

Scipio  Nasica,  205 

Scotus,  Duns,  60,  285,  291 

Selden,  46,  75,  92,  149 

Seneca,  156 

Servius  Tullius,  199 

Shakespear,  225,  232 

Simon  the  Just,  92 

Socrates,  27,  69,  74,  90 

Solla,  F.,  260,  304,  312 

Solon,  151 

Sorel,  G.,  214  ».,  243,  277,  309 

Sostegni,  265 

Spaventa,  B.,  136,  275,  283,  308 

Spinoza,  26,  78,  87,  101,  138,  196,  238, 

275,  290 
Steuco,  138,  287 
Stewart,  Dugald,  238 
Stobaeus,  234 
Stoics,  25,  97 
Strabo,  189 
Suidas,  234 
Sulla,  208 

Tacitus,  74,  102,  146,  169,  172,  209 

Tanucci,  B.,  269 

Tarquins,  51,  167,  199 

Tasso,  291 

Terence,  161 

Terrasson,  269 

Tesauro,  E.,  53 

Theophrastus,  196 

Thierry,  164,  243 

Thomas  Aquinas  (St.)i  28,  281-3  293, 

294 

Thomasius,  99,  240 
Thucydides,  158 
Tiberius,  125 
Timaeus,  138 
Tommaseo,  N.,  257,  275 
Torricelli,  E.,  297-9 
Trabalza,  C.,  309 
Tribonian,  royal  law  of,  209,  226 
Trivulzi,   Cristina,   princess   of   Bel- 

gioioso,  307 
Troya,  C.,  243 
Turpin,  222 
Twelve  Tables,  176, 180,  2  01, 203, 207, 

263,  269,  303 

Ulysses,  179,  184  seqq. 

Vacherot,  274 

Valletta,  G.,  232 

Varro,  162,  195,  207,  255 

Vico  (Gennaro),  253,  267,  306 


INDEX  OF  NAMES 


Vico  (Luisa),  253 

Villarosa,  306,  308 

Virgil,  195 

Visconti,  164 

Vitry  (de,  Father),  251,  304,  312 

Vossius,  63,  188 

Weber,  W.  E.,  307 
Werner,  277,  280,  308-9 
William  of  Apulia,  223 
Windelband,  5  n.,  277,  280,  310 


Wolf,  F.  A.,  243,  270,  309 
Wulf  (de),  301 
Wundt,  241 

Xenophon,  158 

Zeno,  138,  140 
Zeno,  A.,  151 
Zoega,  270 
Zoroaster,  157,  180 
Zottoli,  A.  A.,  290 


THE  END 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  CLARK,  LIMITED,  Edinburgh. 


